Come, Natsuki, The Game is Afoot
by DezoPenguin
Summary: EMDN Story II: In Victorian England, Natsuki goes to Dartmoor to settle a personal matter, but when she is joined by Shizuru she finds herself drawn into a case of insanity, apparitions, and death.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: This is the second in my proposed alternate universe series of fics, following "Elementary, My Dear Natsuki." I'd like to thank all of you who read that fic and commented and apparently decided that it didn't completely suck! I tried to reply to most of you, but to everybody else (including the anonymous reviewers), thank you all for the reviews, alerts, and faves!_

_Thanks also to my friend RadiantBeam, for helping me through some nasty writers' block that ambushed me in Chapter Three of this story. You wouldn't be reading this fic without her. Love also must be given to my own Natsuki, my wife, known here as "Tarma Hartley," who served as general sounding board for this entire series and this story specifically, being peppered with ideas and concepts and ShizNat until her ears hurt. You can show her your thanks by reading her fics, if you happen to like yaoi too._

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More than one head swiveled to look at me when I walked into the Ten Bells. It wasn't because I was female, because a good half of the clientele were women, nearly all drawn from Whitechapel's finest collection of dollymops and streetwalkers. It wasn't my age, since lots of them were younger than nineteen. It wasn't that I was pretty, as several of the girls were more eye-catching that me, especially since I never touched paints or powders to emphasize things. It _might_ have been the exotic "foreign" nature of my looks, since I'd inherited my long, straight blue-black hair and pale complexion from my Japanese mother but my definitely occidental green eyes from my German father. Even so, the East End was a stew of races and nationalities, so such features weren't entirely out of place.

No, the probable fact was that it was my attire that had caught their attention. From the waist down I could have passed for an American cowboy: rugged denim "blue jeans" and leather boots weren't fashionable anywhere in London but were damn practical. For the rest I had on a plain white shirt, a black jacket, and gloves. I had not gone so fully Wild West as to strap a six-gun to my hip, but then again I didn't need to; the two .32 Smith and Wesson Safety Hammerless revolvers in the chamois cross-draw holsters specially sewn into the jacket seemed to be enough firepower to my mind. Though there was a knife in the right boot-top, if it came to that.

So I got some looks and even a few leers. One guy actually made an anatomically explicit invitation, though, so I took the trouble to fix him with what my friend Mai had dubbed the Kuga Death Glare. He went pale, gulped, then turned away and yelled for the barmaid to bring him another gin, no doubt to replace the effects of the several I'd scared off him.

With that settled I walked over to the bar, tossed down a florin, and asked for a whiskey. I knew better than to trust anything actually served at the bar there; if I wanted water I'd have stayed at home. The bartender, an ex-prizefighter who'd had a chunk of his right ear bitten off in the ring once, broke the seal on a bottle of halfway decent Irish and poured with a not totally ungenerous hand. I took the glass and strolled towards the back of the room.

I'd spotted him the instant I'd walked in, seated at a back table nursing a beer. He had a thin, oval face, stubble-dusted cheeks and a protruding nose, and while his clothes were cheap they were also clean, which set him apart from ninety percent of the other patrons--including the aging, half-drunk prostitute who was hanging on his arm, insistently trying to round up business. After about fifteen seconds or so she caught on that his eyes were looking somewhere else than the overabundant cleavage she appeared to be trying to wrap around his biceps and turned to see what had her prospective client's attention. That left her looking me full in the face. She vanished from the pub in under two seconds.

"Thanks," the man said, apparently meaning it. "When it's a matter of money, some people never take no for an answer."

I sat down and tossed off half the whiskey. I wasn't a particularly heavy drinker, but at least I didn't choke and spit up like the first time I'd tried that in front of him three years ago. The memory made my ears burn.

"Glad to help, Porlock," I said. "Still, you have to expect that kind of thing when you pick someplace like this to meet."

"It has atmosphere."

I sniffed.

"Cigarette smoke, spilled liquor, vomit, and far too many people in desperate need of a bath. I think 'miasma' says it better than 'atmosphere.'"

"I mean the history of it, Kuga. Ten years ago that might have been Cathy Eddowes or Mary Kelly you chased off."

Porlock had always had a fascination for old, notorious crimes. I should have guessed he'd work his way around to the Ripper eventually.

"Maybe, but I didn't come here for the ghost of Saucy Jack."

"No, I suppose not. You're chasing another ghost altogether."

"Your message said you had something for me," I reminded him. He nodded and sipped his beer as if to wet a dry throat.

"I found a guy," he said. "The first whisper I've had of anything on that business you wanted me to dig into. A former crewman on the Dutch steamship _Friesland_."

I felt my heart all but skip a beat, but I kept it from showing on my face. I was glad of the gloves, though, as they kept it from being obvious that my hand had tightened on my glass.

"There have been a lot of sailors on that ship, I'd imagine," I said offhandedly, and took a sip.

"Not that many," Porlock countered, "who served on a certain particular voyage from Hamburg to Liverpool fourteen years ago. Even fewer who left the _Friesland_ immediately after that voyage. And how many, do you think, not only left service on the steamer but also gave up the sea entirely to take up residence in a nice little country cottage?"

My eyes widened slightly.

"You mean--"

"See why I thought you'd be interested?"

I slipped an envelope from my inside jacket pocket and laid it flat on the table. He picked ut up, broke the seal, and noted the folded bank-notes inside. Like a magician, Porlock made the envelope vanish and produced one of his own, which he handed to me.

"That's the name, some details of the fellow's history, and most importantly his current address. Take care of yourself, Kuga. Dartmoor's a dangerous place for city folks like you and me."

"Dartmoor?"

"You may be chasing ghosts, but he's hiding out in the middle of them."

The cab ride from Whitechapel back to Baker Street wasn't nearly long enough to calm the fire Porlock's news had lit in my belly. Finally, after so many years, _something_, something real and tangible that I could hold on to. Why would this crewman up and quit if there hadn't been something wrong on that voyage? And to give up the sea? And where had he gotten the money from to oh so conveniently build or buy his cottage? That implied not merely knowledge, but guilty knowledge, the kind I was looking for. It would have been an unspeakable coincidence if it was over some other matter entirely.

I'd always been convinced that murder had been done aboard that ship, but this was the first time I'd had something in my grasp other than my faith in my memories--the memories of a child of five, and of events not clearly seen.

Now I had something tangible, an actual name, a living human being. Someone at whom I could point years of loss and hatred at, and maybe at long last find some kind of resolution.

Unable to wait, as soon as I'd paid off the jarvey I tore open Porlock's envelope and committed the details to memory. Michael West was, to all appearances, an ordinary, even mundane man. He'd started as an able-bodied seaman and had worked on two other ships before the _Friesland_, all with the same company, and had worked his way up to become purser. He was so ordinary that the unusual circumstances of his retirement stood out even more. I memorized the name, the address, and the thumbnail description Porlock had provided. As always, I'd gotten my money's worth when dealing with him, even though he'd gouged me on the price. My financial reserves weren't what they had once been, now that my father had decided he wasn't going to continue supporting his mistress's child past her nineteenth birthday, but for this...

Yeah, this was worth spending it on.

I let myself into the house with my latch-key, locked the door behind myself, and all but skipped up the stairs, letting myself into my rooms.

"_Ara, ara_, Natsuki is back very late."

My fellow-lodger Shizuru Viola was kneeling on the sitting-room floor in a traditional _seiza_ position that made my knees ache just to look at. Shizuru's features betrayed little trace of the Japanese side of her ancestry: brown hair so light in shade as to be nearly a honey-blonde, a brush of olive in her complexion, eyes that were an unmistakable red hue, and a curve of bust and hip more abundant than found in most Asian women. Yet she was much more comfortable with the actual culture, as witnessed by the fact that I found her dressed as she so often was around the house, in a full kimono, and having just completed the tea ceremony.

"I'm glad that you're all right. I know that Natsuki can take care of herself, but a tavern in Whitechapel can be a very dangerous place."

"Like you said, Shizuru, I can take care of myself. Wait a minute; how did you know that I'd been to Whitechapel?"

She pointed at my lower legs.

"Natsuki's jeans are splashed with yellow clay. They are presently having the pavement up in Church Street, and that clay is particular to the area. No cabbie would drive through Whitechapel on the way to somewhere less dangerous, so I can only assume that it was Natsuki's destination."

"And the tavern?"

"You might want to clean your boots. You've been stepping in spilled beer and"--she wrinkled her nose--"the smell has accompanied you home."

This was the problem with living with Shizuru. She was an idiosyncratic person--witness, for example, the way she addressed me in the third person, because she thought my reaction was "cute," though at least she'd backed off on it a _little_ so she wouldn't have to torture her sentences quite so much as she once had--and had made an equally idiosyncratic profession for herself. She was a private consulting detective, an expert whom other inquiry agents as well as the official force turned to when baffled by a case, or referred clients on to when the problems were beyond their scope.

Her method was that which she'd just demonstrated for me: the observation of various details and the ability to apply her encyclopedic knowledge to them to logically deduce (or induce) conclusions. She operated so quickly that the process was almost intuitive, but unlike intuition she was fully aware of every step in the chain.

I'd seen Shizuru put her methods into practice first-hand when she'd invited me along on one of her cases, the Vamberry murder that made such a splash in the press six weeks ago. For some reason she seemed to enjoy having me accompany her as a kind of sounding board and captive audience while she worked, and I'd found myself dragged along thanks to one creative excuse or another on several other occasions: the Lauriston Gardens business, where religion and revenge became hopelessly intertwined; thwarting the nauseating medical experiments of Lowenstein; and the Norbury affair, in which a domestic farce had nearly led to tragedy. Each time I'd had a chance to watch her display her powers of reasoning.

Despite her eccentricities, Shizuru had proven a pleasant enough person to share rooms with. The problem was, I wasn't exactly inclined to discuss this business with her and, well, privacy can be a tricky thing when you lodge with someone who can tell your life history from your shirt cuffs.

No, I wasn't being fair. Of course Shizuru knew more about me than I'd told or wanted to tell, but she never tried to force confidences out of me or press me for details on some point. The truth of the matter was that Shizuru respected my boundaries a lot better than some of my other so-called friends. She made overtures now and again, but they were all about sharing experiences, like when she invited me on her cases, than through talk, the way some women tried to force intimacy on a near-stranger.

That was probably why a lone wolf like me had so easily become accustomed to sharing living space with someone so different as Shizuru. She never asked that I be anything but myself.

"Sorry," I muttered.

"_Ara_?"

"It's nothing." I wasn't going to explain, even if something made me feel like I had to apologize. "Look, Shizuru, I'm going to have to go away for a while."

Proving my point, she didn't ask me where or why.

"Will you be back soon?"

"I don't know. I could be gone for a few days."

"I see." She sipped from her cup, a traditional Japanese one which meant green tea. "I will miss having Natsuki here," she added with a little pout.

"Sorry about that." Wait, why was I apologizing that time?

"I'm sure that it can't be helped, though. I hope that Natsuki has a successful trip."

"I hope so," I said, feeling the pulse of excitement renew itself, making my stomach tremble as with stage fright. I walked over to the desk, fetched down the Bradshaw's, and looked up the train connections I would need. I copied the information down on a memorandum pad, tore off the sheet and stuck it in my pocket, and replaced the volume. Then, deciding that something else needed to be said, I turned back to my companion and added, "Thanks, Shizuru. I mean it."

She smiled at me, the calm, serene smile that went with the tea ceremony or when she wished to calm an agitated client, but said no more. Maybe there really wasn't anything left _to_ say.

Recognizing that sleep wouldn't come easily, I packed that night. Porlock's papers I tossed into the fire, knowing that Shizuru would be curious but wouldn't ask, and that waiting for her to go to sleep would be pointless. Sometimes I wondered if she actually did sleep, or if all that tea just keeps her awake for day and night alike.

As for myself, I slept as fitfully as I'd known I would. When I finally dropped off I was tormented by dreams that weren't dreams at all, but memories. They were memories exaggerated and twisted, though, with leering faces and screams, and swirling water like a thousand clawing hands. I needed no help from the alarm-clock to rise and dress in clothes of similar pattern to yesterday's. I added a nicely embroidered vest in black and red and wore a cloak rather than the jacket, though, to lend a hint of greater formality, and since I'd packed my revolvers I used another American trick, clipping a derringer to the other end of my watch-chain. Ironically, this weapon was chambered for .41 ammunition, much heavier than my usual guns, though of course holding only a single shot. I snatched up my Gladstone, bid farewell to Shizuru and our landlady, and was soon on my way to Paddington Station. The morning train of the Great Western Railway would take me to Plymouth, and connections there and in Yelverton would at last bring me to Princetown, and from there to Dartmoor.

I reached the station and purchased my ticket in plenty of time and was soon settled on the cushions of a first-class smoker. It was a gray, bleak November day, carrying the chill of the coming winter, so that the match-flame as I lit my cigarette shed welcome warmth across my cheek. Though my demeanor impresses some people as "cold" or "frosty," I'm actually a summer person, weather-wise. Maybe it's because I was born in August.

The compartment door swung open, announcing that I'd have company for the first leg of my trip. I was already scowling at the intrusion when a familiar voice changed my assumption.

"_Ara, ara_. I had hoped to arrive before Natsuki started smoking."

"Shizuru."

"Yes," she said, smiling impishly, but I was in no mood for teasing.

"Damn it, Shizuru, you followed me! What the hell are you doing here, prying into my private business?" The train started to move, the first jerk of motion punctuating my accusation. I was really furious with her at this breach of our friendship.

Her face fell, like a puppy that was getting scolded without cause.

"_Kannin na_, Natsuki," she said, slipping into the Kyoto dialect of Japanese that sometimes sprinkled her casual speech. This one meant "I'm sorry" or "forgive me" or something like that, I thought. "I admit that I knew you were traveling by this train, and I thought that as I would be going this way in any case, it would be pleasant to have your company. I didn't think of how you would see it, so please forgive me for forcing my company on you."

I looked at her curiously. There was real hurt in her expression, glittering in her crimson eyes.

_Damn._

Fifteen seconds ago I had been furious at her, and now I felt _sorry_, of all things. It didn't make sense at all, how she could crawl under my skin like that.

"You said that you were going this way anyway?"

She nodded.

"I have a case. The letter came yesterday, posted from the village of Aldington, about five miles from Princetown on the moors. Natsuki went out on her own affairs for most of the day, so I didn't have time to tell you about it, and you'd already left this morning by the time I woke or else I'd have offered to travel together."

"But I never told you where I was going."

"You wrote the train times down last night," she said apologetically. "Natsuki writes a very firm hand. I saw the impressions on the pad when I was writing instructions for Mrs. Hudson."

"Oh." _Damn_, I repeated to myself. She was right enough about my handwriting; the phrase "bold scrawl" covered it thoroughly. Someone with Shizuru's observational skills could hardly miss the deep scores I'd have left on the next sheet. She _had_ noticed, and had joined me in this compartment in the hope of some friendly company, and I'd responded by all but biting her head off and accusing her of prying into my affairs.

I felt like a heel, lower than dirt.

"Shizuru, I...I didn't mean...oh, damn it, I'm lousy at this, but I'm really sorry."

It was a pathetic attempt at an apology, but it got through somehow. Shizuru's face lit up at once, eyes shining.

"Then, Natsuki doesn't mind my company?"

"No, though you might mind Natsuki's," I made a weak joke at her third-person habit. "She's feeling a little crabby today, as you can tell."

It's probably the cigarette smoke," Shizuru said.

"Hey, it was here before you were."

The conductor stopped by to punch our tickets, and before long we were well out of London, winding our way west through the countryside.

"Whatever happened last night in Whitechapel obviously has you badly on edge, Natsuki," Shizuru said as I stubbed out the cigarette, fumbled with another, then gave it up and slipped the case back in my hip pocket. "Is there anything I can do?"

I shook my head.

"I'm sorry. It's...it's something I need to handle on my own, that's all. It's personal, and--"

She shook her head.

"Natsuki does not need to say any more," she said, and dropped the subject completely.

"Can you tell me about your case?" I asked. Maybe I wanted to balance things out, to give her the chance to tell me to butt out of her affairs, but she didn't say that.

"This is confidential, so I trust that you won't repeat anything to anyone else?"

"Of course."

"I know that I can trust Natsuki, but it was important to say it." She took a letter from under her rich purple traveling cloak and handed it to me. "I would appreciate your opinion."

I unfolded the letter; it was written on fancy cream-colored stationery in a neat, feminine hand, the kind my teachers had tried to make me learn before I started skipping out on seminary entirely.

_My Dear Miss Viola,_

_I write to you in the desperate hope that you can help our family. My poor father is plagued by horrible visitations! Edward believes that he is going mad, but I am certain that there is more to it. If you wire when your train will arrive in Princetown, I can have the carriage waiting for you to bring you to Warburton Grange._

_Please, you must lay this devilish woman to rest before she takes my father with her!_

_Yours in need,_

_Laurel Warburton_

"It sounds like something out of Mrs. Radcliffe," I said. "She doesn't identify the 'devilish woman' or who Edward is or what it is that makes him think her father is losing his mind."

"Miss Warburton is a very scared woman."

"Miss?"

"Her home is Warburton Grange and she apparently lives with her father, so it is unlikely that she married into the Warburton family."

"Oh." I could see what she meant--now that she'd explained it. "I agree about her being scared; you can see how her hand shakes in the second half of the letter. And there's one phrase in here I don't like."

"'Lay to rest'?"

"Yeah. This is something right out of a Gothic novel."

Shizuru smiled.

"Natsuki is afraid of ghosts?"

"No way. Seances and spirits are all just a load of bunk," I said. I knew well enough that the dead didn't need to roam the halls clattering chains to haunt the living. Shizuru just sighed.

"Natsuki has no romance in her soul," she teased, making me blush.

"It's not that. It's just..." I stopped, wondering why I was about to say what I was going to say. In the stories I read, if I waited even one day to act on Porlock's tip, I would find Michael West dead, unable to tell me anything. But that was just a literary cliche and...damn it, the hurt I'd seen on Shizuru's face nagged at me even now. "Would you like me to come with you? I don't know if I can be of much help, but if there's a ghost and a madman out in some lonely house on the moors..."

She brightened at once, giving me a sunny smile.

"Your company would be most welcome. But what about your own errand?"

"It can wait a few days if it has to," I said with an assurance I didn't feel. Was I letting a once-in-a-lifetime chance slip away? And why the hell did I feel so guilty over Shizuru anyway? It wasn't like I owed her anything.

"Then I'd be pleased to accept. Whatever horrors the moor holds, we'll face them together."

I had no idea then how literal she was really being.

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_A/N: Natsuki's firearms are perfectly real period weapons; I suspect that if Shizuru ever finds out that Natsuki's .32s are nicknamed "Lemon Squeezers" that the teasing will go on for hours. "Fred Porlock," as many of you probably already know, is the name of Sherlock Holmes's secret contact/informer within the Moriarty organization (as seen in _The Valley of Fear_), so I figured that name would be good for Yamada to have here. I'm only somewhat confident in the railway connections mentioned, but I think they're accurate._

_And for those intrigued by the cases that Natsuki refers to in passing and wish that they could read them, well, you can--sort of. Since I'm using the offhand references from the original Sherlock Holmes stories for the plots of this series (as I mentioned in one of the author's notes for "Elementary, My Dear Natsuki"), I decided to get appallingly cutesey and use the _actual_ Holmes cases for Natsuki's references. These three are, in the order Natsuki mentions them, _A Study in Scarlet, _"The Adventure of the Creeping Man," and "The Yellow Face." One of those omnipresent Internet cookies for you if you noticed that on your own!_

_"Mrs. Radcliffe" refers to the author of the first (or second, if you count Walpole's _The Castle of Otranto_) "Gothic" novel, _The Mysteries of Udolpho_, which pretty well kicked off an entire genre of "horrid" literature in the early 1800s._


	2. Chapter 2

Time seemed to fly by together with the miles as the train wound its way westward. I still couldn't believe on some level that I'd made the offer, nor could I believe that even several hours later it still seemed like the right thing to do.

I was glad Shizuru had joined me for another reason as well. I hadn't bothered to pack a book or any other reading material, and that left me without anything to do. Maybe I'd just expected to stare out the window and brood for hours on end; I'll do stuff like that sometimes if left to my own devices.

Shizuru, though, was really good at small talk, the kind of thing that fills time without touching on anything of importance. She deftly and resolutely kept the conversation away from either her errand on Dartmoor or mine, instead covering topics from whether a new Italian restaurant offered an authentic taste to the artistic merits of Puccini versus Wagner to the likely economic impact of a new proposed tariff being discussed by Parliament. Our first change of trains came faster than expected, and it seemed like no time had passed at all until we were standing on the platform at Princetown, wisps of vapor rising from our lips in the surprisingly chill air. Only the sinking sun threatening to turn afternoon into glowering twilight told us that several hours had passed since we'd left London, that and the ache in my hips and thighs from sitting on the hard bench seat in the compartment. Shizuru, as always, showed no sign of discomfort; even if she felt something she was far too ladylike to complain about it.

We'd been waiting no longer than five minutes when a man approached us, long-faced and thin though with weathered skin and a wiry strength that made me think of a living piece of rawhide, stretched taut. His face was grim and his eyes shadowed beneath the brim of his cap.

"You'd be Miss Viola and Miss Kuga?" he asked.

"We are," said Shizuru.

"I'm from the Grange to fetch you back. These all your things?" he asked, indicating our luggage, or more accurately Shizuru's luggage.

"Except for this." I lifted my hand slightly to indicate the Gladstone I was holding.

"Very well. If you'd follow me, I have the trap waiting." He picked up Shizuru's various suitcases and boxes with a deft ease that showed both coordination and strength, then walked away without checking to see that we were following.

"How did he know about me?" I muttered suspiciously.

"When we changed trains in Plymouth, I sent a wire from the station so that Miss Warburton would know to expect two people."

That was thoughtful. I doubt Miss Warburton, or her servants, would have been happy to find that another room had to be made up and another place laid at table only when I walked through the door.

The servant took us to where a horse and trap waited, not exactly the "carriage" promised in the letter but welcome enough. He loaded in the baggage, then gave us a hand up before taking his seat. With a flick of the reins, the horse was underway.

Some people have found a stark beauty in the great moor, but I was not one of them. Stripped of green by the passing autumn, the bleak, open grounds were barren and forbidding to my eye, a cold sameness that stretched to the horizon, broken only occasionally by the jagged tors. I could easily see how someone could lose their bearings and wander aimlessly until exhaustion or exposure took them, particularly a lifetime city-dweller like myself. My sensitivity to atmospheres was usually so minimal as to constitute callousness, but somehow Dartmoor seemed to weigh on my soul like a great stone pressing me down. If there were ghosts, this would be the place where they would walk.

Even Shizuru seemed affected by the dismal majesty of the place, or else she somehow divined its impact on me and respected my mood with her silence, for the journey passed with almost nothing being said, the near opposite of on the train. At last the road dipped towards a hollow where I could see a jumble of gabled slate roofs, chimneys puffing out streams of smoke that told of warm fires and meat roasting for dinner while lamplight spilled forth from windows against the descending night.

I guessed that this welcome sight must be the village of Aldington, but our driver didn't descend into the hollow. Instead, he took a side track, and perhaps ten minutes later the gray bulk of a house came into view against the darkening sky.

Warburton Grange was a solid block, a mass of stone rearing three stories above the moor. A wall protruded from its front corners, extending out and closing in to encircle a kind of courtyard before the doors. Heavy iron gates had been left open, and we drove through, passing an elaborate fountain with rearing gargoyles above a pool of brackish, dark water. A second gate of newer construction pierced one of the side walls of the court, probably to give better access to stables and outbuildings.

"Secret passages and hidden crypts," I murmured. "I was right; this might as well _be_ Udolpho." Shizuru didn't _quite_ smile at that, but there was a slight movement hinting at it.

The trap drew up to the front doors, which were eight feet tall and hewn from massive oak. We were received by a stiff-backed butler in a dark coat that matched his beard, the color standing out sharply against his pale face. In his eyes I could see traces of some private sorrow, which must have been extraordinarily strong to penetrate the rigid armor of his professional bearing. Ashworth--his name, at least according to the driver--efficiently dispatched our baggage to the rooms that had been prepared for us, then showed us to a parlor where, he said, Miss Warburton would receive us presently. He turned to go inform her of our arrival, but before he could go there came a roaring, bull-like cry or scream, followed by the crash of shattering glass and the slam of a door. Ashworth's shoulders twitched.

"You were his batman in the service?" Shizuru asked gently. He turned, no less surprised than I was.

"Yes, miss; I've been with the Colonel for over twenty-five years now. I've need him stand face to face with shell and shot and bloody carnage that destroyed brave men. He's never flinched from anything in his life. But this business...I pray to God you can find a solution."

He left us alone in the room, which was furnished in dark color and a heavy, masculine style that felt almost oppressive under the circumstances. I no longer needed to ask what had put that haunted look in the butler's eyes; the scream we'd heard had mingled rage and terror in an explosive package, a soul in torment fighting against its fate.

"How did you know about Ashworth?" I asked, mostly to keep my mind from dwelling on it.

"He clearly had a military bearing from his stance and movements, but his emotions suggested a stronger connection to the master of the house than an employee to employer, more like an old family retainer in the classic traditions of service. The idea that our client's father was also a military man was supported by the decor. That bronze, there, which serves as a bookend on the table next to the tobacco-jar, is from Benares, for example." She pointed out a couple of other items of Indian origin which had meant nothing to me until then; I knew nothing about India and its people and culture other than broad generalizations that I knew to be badly flawed. "I therefore deduced that Ashworth had been Warburton's orderly or batman in the army and had followed his master into private service."

"Oh, I see." I felt like I ought to say more, so I added, "That was pretty remarkable."

"No, it was very simple, almost elementary," she said offhandedly. I wondered if the atmosphere was getting to her as well. I'd never seen her affected by an environment before, but then again I'd thought I was more hardheaded than she was and I was feeling the oppressive weight of it. Unless my own errand was making me more sensitive to this kind of thing than I usually would be.

I was saved the trouble of any more thinking in circles when the door opened and a pretty blonde girl only a couple of years older than we were came into the parlor. She wore a cream-colored dress, cut simply, and her hair was pulled back into a simple chignon. Eyes red-rimmed from weeping looked back and forth between us with an almost pathetic relief.

"Thank God," she breathed. "Thank God you've come, Miss Viola."

Shizuru answered her confusion as to which of us was which by extending her hand.

"I only wish the circumstances were not so trying, Miss Warburton, but I hope that we will be able to help. May I introduce my associate, Miss Natsuki Kuga?"

"Hello," I said with a little wave, keeping my side of things as thoroughly informal as always.

"I'm very glad that you could come. I'm Laurel Warburton. My father, Colonel Bennet Warburton, is the master of Warburton Grange. He...he needs your help desperately!"

"We're here to offer any help that we may," Shizuru answered her. "Please, tell us everything that you can."

Miss Warburton invited us to sit down. The chairs were comfortable, padded in a rich mahogany-colored leather that well matched the rest of the room's decor.

"I hope that you'll forgive my letter," she said. "I am aware in retrospect that it was not particularly clear as to details. I must have sounded like a foolish girl."

"It managed very well to convey the urgency of the situation and the depth of your concern," Shizuru told her gently, leaning across to pat the back of the young woman's hand. "That was more than enough to bring us here."

"You are kind." She sighed, then continued on. "I shall start by giving you some of the background. The Grange is an old family estate, and my father was the only son. While some men might have sat back and merely waited for their patrimony, he was cut from a different cloth. He persuaded his father to purchase him a commission in the army, and he was soon posted to India with his regiment. He served with distinction, and was even mentioned in dispatches during the Mutiny, and rose to the rank of colonel. At last, though, he tired of the East and returned home after more than twenty years without seeing an English shore. As his parents had died while he was in the East, he inherited the Grange and settled in to country life. Uncle Gregory was surprised by how it seemed to suit Papa so well after so many years in the army, but it did. Convinced of his desire to stay, he made a second late change to his lifestyle when he met and married my mother. She was the widow of a neighboring landowner, and so only a few years younger than Papa."

I wondered why she'd taken the trouble to mention that. Maybe it was because in dealing with a couple of women she wanted to defend her father from the impression that he'd plucked a child bride as so many middle-aged or elderly men did?

"I grew up here on the moor," Miss Warburton continued, "but only in the past few months have I given any thought to its more sinister aspects. Mama's death in September of last year was the first shadow that fell across us. For the first several months, nearly until Christmas, Papa was so consumed with grief that I thought it would nearly break him; he even went so far as to order her room locked and her things left intact within. At last, though, his spirit rallied and we believed that all would be well, until..."

She shook her head, and I thought of the cry we'd heard.

"Oh, Miss Viola, I know that Edward and Uncle Gregory think that he's losing his mind! They never say it outright, at least not in front of me, but I can tell what they're thinking. But it isn't true! Papa isn't mad; if his behavior is affected it's because he's being driven to it, tormented by this spirit!"

"Who are 'Edward' and 'Uncle Gregory'?"

"Gregory Dashiell is my uncle by marriage. His wife was Papa's sister, Catherine. While Papa was in India they lived at the Grange and Uncle Gregory managed the estate for over ten years. When Papa moved back, Uncle Gregory stayed on here in that capacity, even after my aunt died."

"Was that also recent?"

"Oh, no. Aunt Catherine died even before I was born. I think even before Papa married Mama."

Which meant that Gregory Dashiell had been living off his wife's family for upwards of twenty years. I wondered if this 'estate manager' business was legitimate work or if the man was just a leech.

"And Edward?"

Miss Warburton's cheeks flushed pink.

"Edward is Dr. Edward Brayle. He bought a practice in Aldington when old Dr. Griffin retired. We're engaged to be married."

"Does Colonel Warburton approve of the match?"

"Oh, yes, Miss Viola. He likes Edward. Edward is a Devonshire man by birth as well as residence, and I believe that helps."

"So there were no objections to the marriage, then." Shizuru phrased it as a statement more than a question, but Miss Warburton answered her, perhaps because she sensed a veiled accusation against her beloved.

"None at all. Indeed, we had hoped to marry by the New Year, but Papa's...indisposition...has put that in doubt."

"We'll try our best, Miss Warburton, to see that things are put right for you. Perhaps it isn't too late to salvage your wedding plans."

Miss Warburton's eyes widened, and for a moment she looked eagerly, even pathetically hopeful. Shizuru, I'd noticed, could do that. Her calm demeanor and serene smile projected the impression of control, that matters were in safe hands. The best I could ever do, by contrast, was project the impression that people should hide under the furniture.

"Now, please tell us what has happened."

"It began two months or so ago. Papa often spends much of the evening after supper in his study, unless we have guests. He was there that night when suddenly, we heard him give a great cry, a bellow of shock and terror. Naturally we all rushed at once to see what was the matter. We found him in the hall outside the study door, white-faced and trembling. He told us that he had been startled by something on the stair, and asked if I had been there. I denied it--I was reading in this very parlor--and he proceeded to interrogate Mrs. Clay and the maids."

"Mrs. Clay is the housekeeper?" Shizuru speculated.

"Yes, and the cook--or, more accurately, she was. The incident was repeated three days later and again Papa questioned the female servants. When they denied being away from their duties, he sacked them on the spot, one and all."

Miss Warburton twisted her hands in her lap.

"In truth, I was very relieved that Edward had been with me at the time of the second apparition, so that I could prove it was not me. Whatever he saw, I am sure there is more to it than he let on."

I couldn't argue with that; a woman out for a stroll couldn't explain a reaction like the Colonel's.

"On the next occasion, he actually discharged his service revolver! I was nearly frightened out of my wits when I heard the shots, but Papa refuses to tell us any more. Indeed, on that occasion he insisted that it was just a prowler he had shot at, a tramp trying to break into the garden, but none of us believed him. We could all see the lie in his face..."

Her voice trailed off; she looked down at her hands before she spoke again.

"He wakes raving in the night, he has taken to drink, and these incidents...More than once he's rushed out into the garden and gone over the path, trying and failing to find any traces of the..._thing_ that he sees. Edward...he says that as a medical man, he cannot in good conscience conceal this behavior if it goes on much longer, that he cannot be permitted to remain a danger to himself and others. My uncle...agrees with Edward, though he does not like to admit it."

Shizuru nodded at her.

"But you do not agree with them, Miss Warburton?"

"I...I cannot deny that Papa is under great strain, but I do not think that he is mad! Rather, I am certain that whatever upset he feels is a thing that has been created, forced upon him."

"That, in short, whatever he sees is not a symptom of his upset but rather the cause of it."

"Yes! I can only believe that it must be something dreadful, some devil that haunts him without mercy, some curse that followed him out of the East...or perhaps some spirit from the moors..."

Shizuru leaned forward and took the girl's hand in one of her own.

"I know that this is very hard for you, but we will try our best to get to the bottom of it all. Until then, you must try to stay strong for your father's sake. He needs you now."

She offered Miss Warburton a handkerchief and our hostess dried her eyes gratefully.

"Now, I have only a few questions for you. Do you think that you can manage that?"

"Yes, Miss Viola."

"Good girl," Shizuru said as if Miss Warburton was her junior instead of the other way around. "First of all, can you tell me, what was the date of the first incident?"

"I...I believe that it was the 24th of September. Yes, I remember that because Uncle Gregory had visited Aunt Catherine's grave that afternoon. He does that every year on the anniversary of her death."

Another time, in another place, I might have thought of that as romantic. In that gloomy parlor, though, all I could think is that it sounded like there was yet another haunted man at Warburton Grange. For all that it was to me a side trip to my real purpose on Dartmoor, Shizuru had found a peculiarly apt place to bring me.

I wondered offhandedly if there was anything that could haunt Shizuru. She seemed so perfectly composed most of the time. I'd seen on the train that she could be hurt, though, and anyone that kind couldn't help but be vulnerable. I wondered what twist of fate had turned her towards her unusual profession.

"Now, has anyone else been with your father at any time which he appeared to see something?"

Miss Warburton shook her head.

"No, never."

"Has your father ever made mention of some scandal or regret from his military career? Or, what might be more likely, _not_ said something, refusing to discuss some point?"

Again she shook her head, this time with a firm, deliberate motion.

"No, Miss Viola, never. There hasn't been anything of the sort, from Papa or Ashworth, either."

"Your fiancé lives in Aldington, does he not?"

"Yes; Edward is often our guest, but he lives in the village."

"Then, can you recall any occasion on which Colonel Warburton apparently saw something on which Dr. Brayle was _not_ present?"

She wasn't expecting that question, I could tell. She flinched in her seat, her face growing even more pale than it already was.

"You can't be saying...No, that isn't possible, Miss Viola! Edward couldn't have had anything to do with any of this! If that's what you're going to claim, then you can go back to London at once!"

Personally, I'd have said "fine" and sent her a bill, but Shizuru was more tolerant of other people's emotions.

"Miss Warburton, I'm not saying any such thing. I'm only trying to understand the circumstances of this affair."

Her voice was calm, reasonable, maybe even kind, and it worked.

"I'm sorry. I pleaded with you to come here and help us, and I lost my temper at you for doing your job."

"It's only natural that you'd defend the person you love," Shizuru countered. "Hiring a consulting detective can be very uncomfortable. I question, I pry, and often the things I learn turn out to make my client unhappy rather than relieved."

"Then why do you do it?"

Shizuru shrugged elegantly and gave Miss Warburton a profound-sounding non-answer. "It's what I am."

There wasn't really much that could be said to that and Shizuru knew it. She waited a moment's pause, then resumed her control of the conversation.

"If possible, I'd like to speak with the other persons involved in this."

"Of course; Uncle Gregory and Edward are here and--"

She shook her head.

"I would prefer to meet your father first, if that is possible, and form my own impressions before hearing those of the other gentlemen."

Miss Warburton's face fell.

"If you want...but I'm not sure that Papa will necessarily be willing to see you. He has refused to call in the police, even earlier, when it seemed that a mundane prowler might have been responsible."

"I expected as much, but shall we see what we can do?"

"Very well."

She rose and led us from the parlor through a passage paneled in dark wood and into a broader corridor with walls of stone. Half the passage's width became a narrow staircase and Miss Warburton led us up that, then to the door at the end of the hall. I saw shards of glass glinting on the floor, and remembered the crash that had followed hard on the shout we'd heard earlier. The acrid smell of spilled alcohol was strong enough that I could barely scent a hint of jasmine beneath it. She knocked at the door.

"Colonel Warburton must believe in guarding his back," I murmured as we hung back. "That door would take artillery to knock down. If he doesn't want to talk to you, you're out of luck."

"Perhaps Natsuki would break it down for me?" she teased.

"Idiot," I replied automatically, though I had to admit that the banter had lifted my spirits slightly from the grim stories we'd been hearing and the young woman's obvious fear.

I heard muffled speech from the other side of the door. Whatever it was, it must have been acceptable, as Miss Warburton opened the door and beckoned to us. We followed her into a square, paneled room lined with shelves that groaned under the weight of books and of Indian curios that, stripped of their natural context and transplanted into this conventional English setting, were but meaningless weird images out of a dream. A man was seated at the massive mahogany desk, tall and broad with strong, square features, a shock of stark white hair and bristling brows.

"Who is this?" he roared. A convulsive movement of his hand nearly upset the cut-glass tumbler on the desk. "Who have you brought here, Laurel? Are these the devils that have been stalking me?"

My derringer flicked into my hand, for I saw him seize up a Webley from the desktop and begin to swing it in our direction. I didn't want to shoot the man we were here to help, but while a ghost or a delusion might shrug off bullets I doubted that Shizuru or I could be quite so confident when faced with an Ely's No. 2. My finger was already tightening on the trigger as the barrel leveled at Shizuru.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_A/N: The reference to Colonel Warburton's father "buying his commission" refers to the old practice in the British Army of literally selling officer's commissions. This was abolished in, I believe, 1871 as part of the "Cardwell reforms", but Warburton would have entered the army in 1850 or so according to the timeline Laurel gives. The "Mutiny" refers to the Indian rebellion of 1857, known as the "Sepoy Mutiny" in Victorian times._

_The "Ely's No. 2" is a reference to one of the most commonly misunderstood lines in "The __Adventure of the Speckled Band." It's not a type of gun; rather, it's the _cartridge_ that's used by __Watson's Webley service revolver._

_Benares is the old English name for Varanasi, India, and the way it would be called in the Victorian era._


	3. Chapter 3

"Papa, no!" Miss Warburton screamed as the Colonel swung the Webley towards Shizuru. Her shout made him hesitate just before the gun was in position to fire, which made me hold up as well.

"Laurel?"

"These are my guests, Papa, not intruders! They've only just arrived this evening!"

He stared at her, wild-eyed and trembling, then fell back from the emotional precipice. His eyes dimmed; he sagged back to the chair and let the revolver drop with a thud to the desktop.

"Of course, of course," he muttered, almost under his breath. "I know better than to..."

He didn't finish the sentence, at least not aloud. I palmed the derringer and slipped it back into my pocket, hoping that neither Warburton had seen it. An armed standoff was not the best way to introduce oneself. The incident, though, pretty much settled my mind on the question of the Colonel's sanity.

Warburton reached for the glass, lifted it, saw that it was empty, and pushed himself up out of the chair and went over to the sidebar. He picked up a decanter, filled the tumbler half-full, and downed the contents in one gulp. The trembling ebbed almost at once, the alcohol dulling the shadows in his mind, though perhaps just setting the stage for new ones. Gathering himself, he turned back to us.

"I apologize for that display. It was an unforgivable lapse, and I can only say that my private affairs are...troubled," he finished lamely. Miss Warburton hastened to fill the void.

"Papa, these are Miss Viola and Miss Kuga, from London. Ladies, this is my father, Colonel Warburton."

"From London, you say? And what brings you ladies to Devonshire?"

Miss Warburton seemed to hesitate, but Shizuru spoke up at once.

"Your daughter is concerned about you, Colonel. I am a specialist in these matters."

"A...specialist? A doctor, you mean?" he snapped suspiciously, bristling at the obvious implication.

She shook her head.

"No, Colonel, not an alienist. Miss Warburton believes in you. I am an inquiry agent."

He regarded her doubtfully.

"A detective? That presumes that there is something to detect."

"Given that you just pointed a gun at her, you seem to think there is," I noted. Miss Warburton's startled expression said that she wasn't impressed by my plain speaking.

"I...thought that it was possible, once, but I was just fooling myself." His hand tightened on the glass. "My daughter is a kind girl, but...this is something that can't be solved with...with footprints or cigar-ash. How can you hope to detect things that can't be touched, that are there and then gone?"

"What is it that you see?" Shizuru asked.

"That's..." Without warning, his temper flared up again. "It's none of your concern! I didn't ask you to come around here, prying into my private affairs! I won't have it, do you hear me? I won't! Prying, snooping interlopers, never letting well enough alone...Damn it, why can't you just leave me in peace?"

Roaring, he spun and hurled the empty glass; it struck the wall next to the diamond-paned casement window and shattered into a rain of glittering shards.

"Just _leave me be!_" he repeated, half-sobbing, half-screaming. He reeled away from us and beat his fists on the spines of some of the heavy books on the shelf.

"I'm very sorry," Shizuru said quietly, even though I doubted that the Colonel was necessarily talking to us at all by that point, and we retreated from the room. Miss Warburton looked nearly as distraught as her father as she closed the study door behind us. It was no wonder; to have to share that kind of experience with complete strangers must have been awful for her.

"Papa," she whispered sorrowfully, pressing her hand against the closed door for a moment before turning sadly away.

"I...I fear that I have brought you on a fool's errand, Miss Viola. This...I can no longer hide from the truth."

Shizuru shook her head.

"As you said before, he is clearly under a great strain. That cannot be denied. What is still in question is _why_ he is in that condition. If he is haunted only by the shadows of his own mind, then there is nothing we can do; it would be a matter for an alienist. But when you wrote to me, you did so believing that there was some outside cause, some person or thing that has driven him to this. If we can find that cause and remove it, then it may be possible to bring him relief."

"Do...do you really think that...it's possible?"

Shizuru's gentle smile never wavered.

"I think that one should never lose hope without evidence proving that you should. without hope, what do we have?"

I frowned at that. My own experience didn't exactly run in that direction, but when Shizuru said it, it was hard to argue against. Nor was I going to throw cold pragmatism in Miss Warburton's face by pointing out that when a man turned to that kind of drinking, starts pointing weapons at his guests, and has such erratic fits of rage as that, merely finding out that he had good reason for his fears wasn't necessarily going to help him climb out of the hole he'd dug himself.

And who knew? People could recover. Drunks sometimes did put away the bottle, and the disturbed regain their sanity.

"Thank you," Miss Warburton said. After a pause, she went on. "You both must be tired and hungry after your trip down from London. Dinner will be served soon; I'll show you to your rooms, so you can refresh yourselves and dress before we eat."

"Thank you very much."

A side corridor away from the hall led to the Grange's guest bedrooms; we had been placed next to one another. My Gladstone and Shizuru's luggage had already been brought up. Miss Warburton indicated the location of the guest bathroom, told us that we'd be able to meet Dashiell and Dr. Brayle at supper, and then left us to our own devices. I was glad of it, since it gave me the chance to talk with Shizuru without anyone else around.

"_Ara_, aren't you going to dress for dinner?" was the first thing she said, though, even as she selected a cream-colored frock from her luggage.

"I can eat in pants as well as in skirts," I replied bluntly.

"Natsuki is a law of etiquette unto herself?" she teased, smiling at me.

"You've seen my luggage," I admitted. "You know I didn't pack a dress. I didn't expect formal dining when I left London."

The impish glint in her eyes told me that she'd known it very well, but had just gone on to tease it out of me. It was partly my own fault, I supposed; I hated to admit being at a loss and could end up blustering futilely to avoid it. Shizuru sometimes found that terribly amusing, for some reason.

"Could we talk about the case now?" I groaned. The humor vanished from her expression at once.

"There isn't much to talk about yet. It really is as I told Miss Warburton. Either the Colonel is suffering from delusions, or he's genuinely seen something." She put a fingertip to her lower lip. "The recent death of his wife could have been the tipping point in his mind. Perhaps he imagines it is her spirit, back from the grave."

"Why?"

"To take him with her, to punish him for some imagined or real indiscretion, or because she cannot find peace? There are any number of possibilities, whether the apparition is genuine or imagined, and that's only if it is his wife he sees."

I was focused on another part of what she'd said.

"Shizuru, what do you mean by 'genuine or imagined'? You're not saying that you think there could be a _real_ spirit here?"

"If there was such a thing, this would certainly be the place for it. I can only imagine the effect it would have, living here for decades on end."

"Maybe so, but ghosts?"

"I didn't say that, Natsuki. By 'genuine,' I only meant that the Colonel sees something that actually exists, not a phantasm of his mind. What it is could be a number of different things."

"Miss Warburton said 'that devilish woman' in her letter, but I hadn't heard anything about that since we came here."

Shizuru sighed.

"Of course you have, Natsuki. She told us that he rigorously questioned, then later discharged the female staff. The Colonel himself verified it when he challenged us, demanding to know if we were 'the devils' that tormented him. Quite clearly the apparition, whatever it may be, comes in feminine guise."

Most of the time when Shizuru explained things I was impressed by her deductive abilities. This time, though, I felt like kicking myself for missing the obvious. And, of course, Shizuru just had to notice immediately.

"Natsuki," she said, gently touching my forearm, "it isn't something to reproach yourself over. I know that you are giving up time to spend on a valuable personal matter to help me; you cannot help but be preoccupied. I could hardly devote my best efforts to a case if I were caught up in a more important problem. Only..."

"Yeah, I kind of knew there'd be a 'but' in there."

"I'm not trying to chide you. I only want you to be aware that there is danger here, and I do not want you so lost in your own thoughts that you don't realize it."

I chuckled.

"Yeah, well, staring down the barrel of a service revolver is a pretty good reminder that there's danger."

Shizuru shook her head.

"That is not what I meant. There is an atmosphere over this house, of which I am afraid the Colonel's madness is only a symptom rather than the cause. The emotions run deep beneath the surface here, whether the apparition be a spirit or something worse."

"You make dinner with these people sound so appetizing."

"I doubt it will be as bad as all that, but I do look forward to meeting the rest of the players in this drama." She looked back over her shoulder at me. The impish grin was back, so I braced myself. "Would Natsuki be willing to play lady's-maid for me?"

I snorted.

"The eminent London specialist can't dress herself?"

"Those of us who choose to properly follow social etiquette can't always expect to do for themselves."

"So what were you going to do if I wasn't here?"

"I'd assumed that I could borrow the services of a maid from this household."

"Lucky I did come, then, since the Colonel sacked them all. I can't exactly see Ashworth or the driver doing up your stays."

"No, that would be a bit much," she agreed.

My inept fumbling with laces and hooks managed to get Shizuru out of her traveling dress and into her dinner gown. She then sat down at the vanity, took down her hair so that it spilled across her shoulders, and worked it back up into a subtly different style, less rigorously contained against the jostling of travel. Shizuru had beautiful hair, I thought, thick and glossy with a hint of a curl and that ranged in color from a deep gold through a rich bronze to a soft brown depending on the light. In a way I envied her. From what I remembered I pretty much looked like my mother all over again except for the color of my eyes. Her looks were all I had of her, though; I knew almost nothing of her history, her culture, her language, what had brought her to England, nothing at all.

No, it wasn't "in a way"--I _did_ envy her. Clearly _someone_ had taught Shizuru about her Japanese side. I assumed it was her mother, since her last name was Italian, but even if she didn't have that, she'd had some connection, some background.

She wasn't missing part of herself.

Shizuru must have seen my expression in the mirror, or noticed a change in posture, something, anyway, that gave away my feelings, because she stopped in the middle of putting a hairpin in place and turned to look at me with worried eyes.

"Natsuki? Is something wrong?"

Some part of me wanted to tell her, to open up and let everything pour out. That wasn't something I was used to feeling. Our entire friendship--hell, the reason I even _considered_ her a friend--was based on her respect for my privacy, the fact that she _didn't_ try to poke and prod into the depths of my heart. That was how I _wanted_ it.

It was Porlock's information, of course, that had done this. The name Michael West, the trip out to visit him, it had ripped the scab off the old wound, called all the ghosts out into the present. Here, in this bleak house on this gloomy moor, I felt their presence more strongly than ever.

But I couldn't say anything. I _couldn't_. Bad enough Shizuru had caught me out this way. My pride couldn't take it if I gave in any more to her.

"This house," I said. "It reminds me of...old ghosts." I managed to put my belligerent face back on again and looked around myself. "Seriously, what is this place, the bloody Castle of Otranto? It's like somebody built it for the purpose of inviting in spooks." That was better. More comfortable. Now I didn't need to give away anything else.

Just like Colonel Warburton.

"Shizuru," I suddenly asked, "why doesn't Warburton tell anyone what he's afraid of? Whatever this apparition is, whatever he sees or thinks he sees, it's driving him mad. He's got family here, a daughter, a brother-in-law, a trusted servant, people he could turn to for help. Why not take them into his confidence?"

"Doesn't Natsuki know?"

A line like that, I'd have expected to see her teasing, cat-grin with it, but not this time. Maybe she felt that a tease would hit too close to home, or--I gave up in disgust; the day that I understood how Shizuru's mind worked would be the day I opened my own detective agency.

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess I do. Pride, maybe--the head of the family, the old soldier not wanting to confess to his dependents that he's faced with something he can't handle. Of course, they can hardly miss it at this point."

"That is one possibility," Shizuru agreed.

"What's another?"

"Fear."

"Eh? You mean, that he was scared of the ghost or whatever it was?"

And with that, her smile was back.

"Not precisely, but...in a way."

"What does that mean?"

The smile was as enigmatic--and as frustrating--as ever.

"Natsuki will have to wait and see."

I gritted my teeth at her easy refusal. In the mysteries I loved to read, the detectives always chose to hold back the solution until the last moment, whether because pride made them want to present a complete case or because they didn't want to accuse without proof, especially where the powerful were concerned. Shizuru, on the other hand, insisted on doing it solely for the purpose of teasing me! I couldn't understand what she found so entertaining about watching me try and fail to catch up with her mind.

It wasn't until quite a bit later that I also realized that my irritation with her teasing had driven the shades of the past back into the corners of my mind where they usually lurked.

Much too late to thank her.

But then, she'd probably known that, too.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_A/N: Just in case anybody missed it, the "Doesn't Natsuki know?" was because Natsuki asked Shizuru why Warburton didn't take his family into his confidence immediately after she, Natsuki, refused to take Shizuru into her confidence about her own personal issue. As in, "you just did it yourself, so you ought to know why he did, too."_


	4. Chapter 4

Warburton Grange's dining hall was a gloomy, high-ceilinged room with heavy, dark beams and two iron chandeliers that hung from rusty chains. Their candles guttered in the drafts, sending shadows playing around the long table and across the faces of Warburton ancestors in the serried row of portraits that marched down the length of one wall. I noted the features of the Colonel, the square jaw and sharp cheekbones, represented in more than one of his ancestors, male and female alike. I even saw one of the man himself, in his mid-twenties or so, standing next to a woman a couple of years his junior seated on a stone bench beneath a spreading elm. She combined the family's strong features with feminine softness to make her quite a handsome figure. The wild mass of auburn hair that framed her face suited her, better than, say, Laurel Warburton's blonde locks would have. I decided that she must have been the late Catherine Dashiell, the Colonel's sister.

On the opposite wall, there was a massive stone fireplace, large enough for a person to stand upright in, if they felt like immolating themselves in the searing log fire. It looked positively medieval, right down to the snarling firedogs that flanked it.

"A relic of a more barbarous time," Shizuru said softly, answering my thoughts so perfectly that I wondered if I'd spoken aloud, until I realized that she was gazing at a boar's head, the trophy of some past hunt, mounted high on the wall. On the other side of the chimney a stag with a spreading rack of antlers matched it. Medieval was right, I thought: history. The past saturated the dining room as it did the rest of the Grange. In an environment like this, ghosts and spirits seemed almost reasonable.

We'd been the first ones to arrive; Laurel Warburton followed a few minutes later in company with a tall man in his early thirties. He had sandy-colored hair nearly the same shade as Shizuru's, only with a bit more definite brown to it. He had a trim, neatly-clipped moustache and a lean, attractive face that contrasted with the Warburton look.

"Miss Viola, Miss Kuga," Miss Warburton said, "let me present my fiance, Dr. Edward Brayle. Edward, this is Miss Shizuru Viola."

"The eminent London specialist," he commented, taking her extended hand and nodding crisply by way of a bow.

"And this is her associate, Miss Natsuki Kuga."

I didn't bother extending a hand for him to bow at while he glanced over my attire with an assessing—and, I thought, dismissive—gaze.

"I hope that you'll be able to give Laurel some relief," he said to Shizuru. "Has she told you about our situation?"

"Yes, and we have been introduced to the Colonel," Shizuru added.

"Then you can understand."

"I can try my best to understand, but a single meeting can't give me the entire picture. Not the way it can be seen by his family"--she glanced at Miss Warburton--"or those who are close to him."

"I see what you mean," Dr. Brayle said. "Still, I can't help but wonder if this is really the right decision, to call in an outsider. This is a private matter, one which deeply affects us all. I don't want to see Laurel put through the strain of public proceedings." He took Miss Warburton's hand and held it between his. He seemed all solicitude, but I couldn't help but wonder if his concern for her was as much concern for himself. A doctor had a reputation to uphold, and it could hardly benefit him to have a wife whose father had been brought before the commissioners in lunacy.

"We are here to help your family," Shizuru said, "not to cause trouble for you."

Dr. Brayle nodded.

"I understand. Even so, when outsiders are brought into a situation--"

"She told you that she was here to help," I snapped. "Miss Warburton is Shizuru's client, isn't she?"

Shizuru touched my arm lightly, a clear signal that she wanted me to back off. I reined in my temper with effort.

"The point is, she's a professional, like you, Doctor, with a code of conduct that applies to that profession."

He looked from me to her.

"I apologize if I have given offense, Miss Viola."

"Not at all, Dr. Brayle. I understand your concerns perfectly, but I can assure you that I have no interest in prying into matters that go beyond what I was hired to resolve."

Dr. Brayle might have said something, but at that moment another man entered the dining room. He was not particularly tall, about Shizuru's height, with auburn hair that was shot through with gray although his neatly trimmed beard was free of silver. He wore a suit of country tweeds as if he'd just come in from outdoors; perhaps he had.

"Ah, Laurel, I see your guests have arrived."

"Yes, Uncle Gregory," our client said, and repeated the introductions.

"We dine _en famille_ here at the Grange," Dashiell provided. "I'd apologize for the informality of it, but I can see that it suits you," he added with a glance in my direction. Humor twinkled in his dark eyes, and the comment drew a smile from Shizuru as well.

"I admit that I wasn't expecting a formal party when I came here," I said, a bit truculently.

"No, quite the opposite," he agreed. "Shall we sit? The dinner should be served soon enough."

We ranged ourself at the long table, clustered near one end. The seat at the head was left unoccupied even though there was a place setting at it; I assumed it was the absent Colonel's. Miss Warburton and Dr. Brayle sat at one side while Dashiell, Shizuru, and I were at the other. The crystal and highly polished silver glinted in the lamplight, and even I could tell that the china was expensive and of high quality. Only a few minutes after we sat, Ashworth entered, bringing the soup.

The meal itself proved to be plain English fare without any particular frills, not bad but slightly bland, hinting at the situation where one of the male servants had been pressed into replacing the duties of the departed cook. Shizuru was largely responsible for the dinner-table conversation, drawing out in turn the taciturn Dr. Brayle, the genial but subdued Dashiell, and the worried Miss Warburton. I wondered if she was gaining an impression of them, using the conversation to gauge their mood and mannerisms, or if it was just her nature in a social gathering. Perhaps it was both.

It was Dashiell who brought the topic back around to the matter which was on everyone's minds.

"So, Miss Viola, can you tell us if you have made any progress in this matter?"

I expected that Shizuru would put him off or otherwise refuse to discuss the case, but she surprised me by replying directly.

"It's very early yet, of course," she said, "but having met the Colonel, I can say that I believe the matter falls within one of three possibilities. As I said earlier to Miss Warburton, it is clear that her father is under a genuine strain, caused by a female apparition of some nature. The question is what, in turn, created the apparition."

"But can you say that there actually _is_ an apparition, as you call it?" Dashiell pressed further.

"Oh, certainly. I believe you mean, what if what he sees or senses is but a phantasm of his own mind?"

He frowned at her plain speech, his lips looking nearly as ruddy as his beard.

"That would be the first of my three possibilities. In that case, the matter obviously lies within your purview rather than mine, Dr. Brayle." The doctor nodded in acknowledgement. "If that does prove to be the case, then all Natsuki and I can do would be to establish it and retire from the field."

A shudder ran through Miss Warburton. Dr. Brayle reached down and took her hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

"Courage, my dear. If that is the truth then we must face it. But you say that is only one of three possibilities, Miss Viola?"

Shizuru nodded and took a sip of her wine, an indifferent red that had been served to complement the beef.

"That is quite true. A second possibility is that some person or persons, wittingly or unwittingly, is or are causing the apparition. In short, a human agency that can be found out and identified."

"That's outrageous!" Dashiell said. "To claim that one of _us_ could--"

"I did not say that the human agency had to be a family member," she replied placidly, "or even that the results were what that person intended, or that whatever the Colonel sees was knowingly produced. But, where humans are involved, they leave traces, and finding those traces is my profession. By finding the person or persons, the phenomena can be stopped or at least shown to be what it is." She again turned to the doctor. "I believe that would go a long way towards helping Colonel Warburton, would it not?"

"Certainly, that would seem to be his best hope, although I would advise against making even that assumption. There may be other functional causes, after all."

I couldn't help but wonder why Dr. Brayle was so pessimistic in dismissing Warburton's sanity. I'd have thought that, as Miss Warburton's fiance, he'd want to offer her hope, not crush it. Though I supposed it might just be that in his medical opinion he believed the Colonel hopelessly mad and saw any suggestions otherwise as pipe-dreams, pointless and a source of pain in the long run. Facing reality took courage, too.

"Yes, that is quite possible," Shizuru observed. "I hope to discover the cause of what has happened here, but its effects are a different matter."

"I am glad you appreciate that."

"We all have our professional limits, Doctor." Neither her expression nor tone changed in the slightest, so it was impossible to say if it was meant to chide him or not.

I figured that it was.

"Miss Viola," Dashiell spoke up again, "you mentioned that there were three possibilities for what the Colonel sees. The shadows of his own mind, and the result of human action seem to cover all of the options. So what is the third?"

Shizuru gave him the full force of her smile.

"The third possibility is that Colonel Warburton is encountering a genuine apparition."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"A ghost?" I protested as we wound our way up a narrow staircase. "Shizuru, you can't be serious?"

"Didn't we already discuss this on the train?" she dodged the question. I really hoped this wasn't going to be one of those times when getting a straight answer out of her was next to impossible.

"No, I called spiritualism bunk and you teased me without actually saying much of anything."

She paused on the stair, then turned and smiled over her shoulder at me.

"Well, then, perhaps it is best to leave it there."

"Shizuru!"

The smile vanished at my expostulation, and she pursed her lips in thought.

"I am certain that there is a ghost haunting Warburton Grange, though whether it is some spirit out of a bogey tale or merely a shadow cast on the souls of the residents I cannot say. Does that answer Natsuki's question well enough?"

I nodded.

"Yeah...yeah, thank you. Though I still think you're wasting time thinking about a real ghost at all."

"Then our present errand should suit Natsuki, since we are in search of evidence."

"Where to?"

"The late Mrs. Warburton's bedroom. As Miss Warburton said, the Colonel has insisted it be kept locked since her death. I have hopes of verifying something."

How it was that she found her way to the part of the manor where the family's bedrooms were located I didn't know. I could only guess that she'd been filling in a plan of the Grange in her mind as we were taken from room to room. She soon found the door we wanted because it was locked.

"Shall we ask Miss Warburton for the key?" she mused.

"It's all right," I said. I stooped to examine the lock; as I'd suspected, it was a simple one, certainly no obstacle to a determined burglar. I took out a ring of skeleton keys, one of the souvenirs of my misspent adolescence. With a little teasing, one turned in the lock and freed the catch.

"There."

"Natsuki is very talented," Shizuru said, sounding like she was genuinely impressed.

"I'm glad that I was able to do something useful." On some of Shizuru's cases, I had to admit, I felt like my purpose was just to provide her with company. Of course they were _her_ cases, not mine, but even so it was a feeling that I disliked.

The room I'd unlocked was different than the others I'd seen thus far in the Grange. The décor had ranged from the stark and ancient, like the dining room or the stairs outside Warburton's study, to the masculine, like the study itself or the parlor where we'd met Shizuru's client. This room was different. The furniture was elegant rather than solid, and of a lighter shade than the mahogany darkness we'd seen. Cream-colored hangings on the canopied bed and curtains at the window added to the impression, and even the walls were done in a light, off-white shade with gold trim.

"Could you light a lamp, Natsuki?" Shizuru asked. "There's little light coming in from the hall anyway, and I'd like to be able to close the door in case anyone walks by."

"_Now_ you're happy I carry matches." There was still oil in an elegant cut-glass lamp on the nightstand; I lit it and trimmed the wick so that it shed good light, and Shizuru closed the door. There was a second door in the room, I noticed, with the key still in the lock. I assumed that it led to the Colonel's bedroom.

"I hate these kind of arrangements," I said, "where the husband and wife have separate rooms."

"_Ara_?"

"It seems lonely, sleeping apart like this. I mean, if I ever got married or fell in love, I'd think I'd want to lay next to him when I fell asleep, right? I mean, to just...you know...then up and go back to my own room, or him to his, seems almost cold."

For a second, Shizuru looked like an actress who'd missed her cue, because her next line felt as if it came a moment late.

"I did not realize that Natsuki was a romantic."

For some reason—maybe that unaccountable delay—I didn't blush or get taken aback by her teasing, but instead was able to grin back at her.

"You mean, you can't tell that just by looking at me?"

"Of course, but appearances can be deceiving," she said, already back to her usual self.

I glanced at the lace hangings on the bed and thought about how she was correct. Shizuru, on the other hand, looked at the floor.

"We're leaving tracks in the dust," she said. "It's true; no one has been in this room for months."

I looked down and saw that she was right; there were no other marks on the floor or rug than our own.

"What does that mean?"

"It means that I can rule out one possibility, and test a theory."

I glanced back up at her, curious. Typically, she didn't explain, but crossed to the dead woman's vanity table. She beckoned, and I brought the light over. It glinted in the dusty mirror, and I suppressed a flinch at the sight our weirdly shadowed faces.

There were several glass bottles set out on the vanity, which was as dust-covered as the floor. Shizuru picked them up one by one, removing the stoppers and sniffing.

"Lavender water...rosewater...ah! This one is from Lafreniere of Paris; I use it myself."

"Shizuru, what are you doing?"

"There isn't any jasmine among these perfumes," she said, setting down the last of the bottles.

"Jasmine?"

"Did Natsuki not scent it earlier?"

"Earlier? Jasmine? No, I...no, wait, I do remember that. Just once, though."

"As did I. Miss Warburton does not wear the scent, so that lends it a certain significance."

"Wait, are you--?"

She turned her smile on me.

"Then you do understand now?"

I shook my head.

"No, I don't. The perfume didn't come from here, that much is obvious, but what does that mean?"

"It means that we need to look at the garden."

"Where the Colonel said that he fired at a prowler?" I remembered Miss Warburton's story. "Except that it wasn't a prowler, of course."

"Of course," Shizuru agreed, "but not a phantasm, either."

Her last hint finally gave me the nudge I needed to realize what she'd been driving at.

"Because one man's delusion doesn't leave a scent for other people."


	5. Chapter 5

The moon was just a sliver in the sky, a fading crescent that would be new in a couple of days, and its feeble light grew and dimmed with the wisps of cloud the night wind blew across it. It shed very little illumination across the garden, which was further shadowed by the bulk of the house and the ten-foot-high enclosing wall.

"You'd need a rope, a ladder, or a partner to get over that wall," I said as we stood at the door. The north and south sides of the manor projected directly back, so that the house surrounded the bulk of the garden on three sides, although there was an extension as well to the west, a kind of "bulge" rather than just a flat wall closing off the U-shape. We were at a door coming from the south wing, from a corridor between the library and what had looked like a ballroom or other reception hall. "It's a job for a group to tackle, not one person, and prepared burglars, not a passing tramp."

Shizuru nodded.

"Yes, this quite supports the assumption everyone made that the Colonel was lying about what he fired at."

"Of course, you knew that already because he questioned all the female servants, and a lone prowler in skirts is even more ridiculous than a lone prowler generally." A woman burglar was far more likely to dress like me than in any way that could be recognized as female at nighttime from Warburton's study window.

"Of course," Shizuru agreed, then threw me a bone. "Still, as Natsuki says, it is only by seeing it ourselves that we can verify that."

"That's not why you're here, though."

"No," she agreed again, "it isn't."

"Miss Warburton said that her father searched the garden after the incident and found no traces. I doubt that there's anything left to see over a week later, particularly not in bad light."

"Not in the way of footprints or broken leaves or that sort of thing," she agreed. "But there's still more to be seen."

I didn't know what she meant, so I looked around to try and see if anything caught my eye. So far as I could tell, the end of the garden by the wall was given over to an herb-garden for the kitchen, while nearer to the house were shrubs and presumably flowering plants, though of course nothing was in bloom at this time of year. A flagstone path crossed the garden from our door to one on the opposite wing, a couple of stately elms provided shade, and a single stone fountain was the only man-made ornament. Thankfully this one was a plain design without statuary; the gargoyle in the front courtyard had been more than enough of that for my taste. The shadows were too thick for me to see the fine details; everything was confined to broad outlines.

Shizuru had helped herself to a lamp that had been on a low table at the corner of the hall, and stepped out ahead of me onto the path.

"Just be careful, okay? I'm not carrying my revolvers, and Warburton's study is outside my derringer's effective range, so we're not going to be able to return fire if he starts shooting again."

She smiled back over her shoulder at me.

"I sincerely hope it will not come to that."

I looked up at the black bulk of the manor house.

"Is it that window, there?" I asked, pointing towards one that was lit on the second floor."

"Yes, I believe so. You'll note that while it commands a view of the entire garden, the trees would prevent someone from seeing either door into the garden from that window." She crouched, letting the light play across the flagstones. "It would be very unlikely that someone would leave tracks so long as they stayed on the path and did not have anything on their shoes. The path runs between the doors and up to the fountain, but the tracks that go to the herb-garden and around the bushes are only dirt and would take footprints."

I eyed the fountain. A person, I thought, could crouch behind it and hide from the study window, although he or she would still be visible from the side wings if anyone was there. And on a night like tonight with little moon, or if it was overcast, a person with dark clothing would be next to impossible to see, particularly with eyes accustomed to the brightness of a lit room. No, the Grange wasn't quite the fortress it appeared, though an outsider would be nearly certain to leave some kind of tracks.

Shizuru straightened up and continued along the path, crossing to the opposite door. It wasn't locked, and our entrance surprised two male servants in the act of cleaning the kitchen of the mess from preparing dinner.

"Forgive us," she said to them and closed the door.

"That settles that," she added to me once we were recrossing the garden. "No one could have left the garden by that door after the shooting incident without being seen."

"Not even another servant? Someone who wouldn't be out of place in the kitchen?"

"No, because even then they'd be seen coming in, and the natural reaction wouldn't be to ignore them but to ask what the shot was, if they were all right, and similar things. The incident would be fixed in their minds."

"Whomever was in the kitchen might have lied to protect a friend."

"When Colonel Warburton dismissed them all, quite possibly without a reference? _Ara_, but that would be loyalty indeed. No, if there was a figure in the garden, then it left by this door."

We went back into the house and I replaced the lamp.

"So where did it go to?"

"Probably the library," Shizuru decided.

"The library? Why?"

"One end of the secret passage is always in the library."

"Secret—"

"The one that leads to the landing by the study," she elaborated.

"Shizuru, what are you talking about?"

She turned and looked at me with what seemed to be genuine confusion.

"But you said it yourself when we first came here. It was Natsuki who mentioned that this was the kind of house that would have one."

"That was just a comment on its appearance!"

"I really do not understand, Natsuki. You suggest the truth, and you are upset about it."

"Next you'll be telling me that the butler did it!"

"Ashworth? Well, it's not impossible."

I gave up and followed her around the corner to the library. I'd expected to find some sprawling room meant for genteel revelation, with well-padded, leather-upholstered chairs set out before a massive fireplace like the one in the dining room, but that wasn't the case. The ceiling was high like the dining room's and another of the iron chandeliers hung from it, candles flickering, but the room itself was small and lined with bookshelves, a plain wooden table in the center surrounded by four straight-backed chairs. A glance at the bookcases revealed old, faded bindings, with titles in Latin or Greek as often as English. This room wasn't a place to relax, but one for research and study.

Gregory Dashiell looked up as we entered. He had a book in his hands, with cracked red leather binding and rusty iron fittings.

"Ah, Miss Viola, Miss Kuga. Any luck in laying the Colonel's ghost?" he said with an attempt at jovial humor that rang false.

"Mmm, there are some promising leads," Shizuru told him. "But I'm glad to catch up with you, as there is something I wanted to ask you privately."

"I can hardly see what you could have to ask that you couldn't say in front of Laurel and Dr. Brayle."

"Not even the Colonel's opinion of their engagement?"

_But Miss Warburton already told us—oh._ Thankfully, I didn't say it out loud and so avoided making a fool of myself.

"I see. But I don't see as to how that's any of your concern."

"Anything that relates to the Colonel's behavior is my concern," she replied.

"You can't seriously be accusing Dr. Brayle of—of what? Somehow orchestrating all this?"

"_Ara_, but that was an interesting conclusion to reach from my question, Mr. Dashiell."

He bristled, his flexing jaw making his beard twitch.

"I can follow an implication easily enough, Miss Viola." In his defense, I had to admit that that one had been pretty obvious. "But if you think Edward Brayle had some reason to bear the Colonel ill will, then you are completely wrong. Among other things Bennet approved of the fact that, like himself, Dr. Brayle wasn't content to wait for an inheritance but made his own way in the world."

"Dr. Brayle comes from a wealthy family, then?"

"Yes. His people have been landowners in Devon since the Glorious Revolution. They came to England with King William. So as you can see, there were no grounds for opposition, whether for personal character, family background, or financial status. Bennet was _happy_ that Laurel had found someone to care for that he freely approved as a son-in-law." His brows grew together. "Now, if that is a sufficient answer, Miss Viola--"

"Actually, I did have one more question," Shizuru took the opening in his literal speech instead of accepting the implied dismissal. Dashiell had already started walking toward the door, and her words jerked him to a stop as if he were a dog that had suddenly reached the limit of its leash.

"What is it?" he snapped.

"As estate manager, you're familiar with the history and architecture of this house, aren't you?"

"Of course."

_Ah! She's going to ask him about the secret passage!_

"The fountain in the front courtyard, do you know when it was added?"

_Wait, what?_

At least I wasn't the only one who hadn't expected that question; Dashiell looked at Shizuru like she'd grown a second head.

"The...fountain?"

"Yes, the one with that rather theatrically posed gargoyle."

Dashiell broke into a smile, surprising me.

"Your description is apt, Miss Viola. The fountain was added in the first decade of the century by Colonel Warburton's grandfather. I believe it was done as a folly, to please his wife."

Shizuru beamed at him.

"I thought I recognized the style. Thank you very much."

"You're welcome," he murmured, still confused.

"Thank you for answering my questions. I shan't keep you any longer." She stepped aside, and I followed her example. He took the invitation and left, book in hand. Dashiell didn't shut the door behind him, and I could hear his footsteps recede down the hall. I shut the door anyway, for privacy's sake.

"Shizuru, what does the fountain have to do with anything?"

"Nothing."

"So you just liked the sound of his voice and wanted to hear more of it? Or is it that you wanted to distract him from being angry at you and figured that a question out of thin air would confuse him enough that it would cool his head?"

"_Ara, ara,_ but that would have been clever of me." Which meant that yes, she'd meant it that way. "But I did want an answer to the question, and Dashiell was most likely to know."

"You just said that the fountain has nothing to do with the case."

"Not directly. It is the time of its construction that is significant."

"Shizuru!"

She took pity on me.

"It's the secret passage, Natsuki. If I'm right, it needs to be in a certain place, and there's no point for it to be there."

"I'm not really sure that I understand."

"Secret passages in historical buildings are constructed for a purpose. It might be a hidden vault for secreting treasure from the royal tax collectors or in times of war, it might be a 'priest's hole' or the like for hiding people, it might be an escape route, or it might be a way to arrange secret assignations. In any case, there would be a purpose for its construction. I've deduced the existence of such a passage, but for it to be it where I believe that it is, then either the function of the rooms in the Grange has changed dramatically over the years, which is unlikely, or the passage would have no discernible function."

She was examining the bookcases as she talked, checking the shelves themselves, looking behind books, examining the floor, and so on.

"From the looks of the dining room," I agreed, "the house hasn't made any big changes in centuries."

"I agree."

"So the fountain tells you that you were right—ah!" My spirits rose as I put Shizuru's explanation together with Dashiell's answer and came up with an idea. "A folly! You said that _historical_ secret passages had a purpose, but a folly's different. Someone might just have put a passage in for the hell of it, because having a secret passage in the house would be fun for a certain kind of person." I didn't add, _the rich, bored kind with way too little to do, _but I thought it. "And you asked about the fountain because while it's creepy, it's not the same kind of creepy as the rest of the Grange, so you figured that it might be a folly, too, and you could ask about it without tipping Dashiell to what you were really asking."

Shizuru turned and gave me a fake pout.

"Natsuki _ikezu_! How am I going to impress you if you figure these things out on your own?" she said before giving up and smiling. Really, she could be such a child, sometimes! Not that I was any better; I could feel my face reddening—at the compliment? Or the mock-hurt feelings? How pathetic did that make me?

"Trust me, there's all kinds of things that I have no understanding at all about," I groused, seeking refuge in bad temper as I so often did.

"Ah! This sounds hollow!" Shizuru changed the course of the discussion suddenly. She'd moved a couple of books and had knocked against the back side of various shelves. I came over and she knocked again; there was definitely an echo.

"You were right," I said, not particularly surprised.

"Help me figure out how to get it open."

We examined the shelf carefully, looking for buttons or switches, latches that could be turned, or the classic book-affixed-to-switch-that-activates-when-tipped routine. After a couple of moments, I found a carving along the left side that moved. I pulled, finding that it was attached to a metal peg. However, it only pulled out an inch or so and stopped without doing anything.

"What, did they build in fake switches as well?" I said, exasperated.

"Perhaps it's merely locked," Shizuru suggested.

"A locking secret door?" I was incredulous, until I turned to look at her and saw she was holding several books and pointing to the shelf. I looked into the revealed gap and, sure enough, there was a keyhole set into the back of the shelf. "I may have to give up mystery stories, if this is the kind of thing reading them does to a person."

"I know that it may seem humorous, Natsuki, but remember that this is a very serious matter for Colonel Warburton and his family."

"Yeah," I sighed, then repeated, "Yeah. I shouldn't get distracted by a ninety-year-old joke." It was called a folly for a reason—it was supposed to be fun. It wasn't the Colonel's grandparents' fault that the house was now caught up in grimly serious matters.

"Can you open the door?"

"I ought to be able to." I came over next to Shizuru and looked at the lock. It was definitely of better quality than the one on the bedroom door, although not a new Yale or Chubb. I didn't bother trying any skeleton keys this time but instead got out the flat leather case concerning my picks and went to work. Shizuru stood very close to me as I operated on the lock, watching with a fascinated look on her face. It surprised me; her nearness was even a little disconcerting.

"Shizuru?"

She turned to me, smile in place.

"This is fascinating, Natsuki. I really should have you teach me how to do that one of these days. I'm sure that it would come in very handy for me."

"Hey, I have to contribute something to this partnership."

"_Ara_, then Natsuki considers us partners, then?"

Had I really just said that? _Natsuki considers that her mouth sometimes operates without her brain contributing to the conversation._ Luckily the last tumbler gave way and the lock came free with a sharp click before I had to figure a way to talk myself out of that one. I went to the other end of the bookcase and pulled on the loose carving. This time the peg came out three full inches and I heard another, louder click as the latch released. The bookshelf swung away silently from the wall.

"Oiled hinges," I said. "This has seen recent use—unless it's just well-maintained by the staff as a matter of course."

The path revealed was short and led to a flight of five or six stairs going up.

"Shall we?" Shizuru invited.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_A/N: I'm rather embarrassed to admit that in my initial draft of this chapter, Natsuki used the expression "a question out of left field." While the dialogue in these stories is, as I've previously indicated, not strictly kept to Victorian standards, I do try to avoid such blatant anachronisms as that one!_

_A "folly," in the sense that Dashiell describes it, refers to some piece of architectural design that is added on a whim, for artistic or atmospheric purposes. There was quite the fetish in the late 18th and early 19th centuries for "Gothic" follies, including addition of such things as ruined towers (that is, they'd be built brand new but already damaged, _as if _they were genuine ruins), churches, gargoyles, and other such matters._

_A "priest's hole" was a secret room in which Anglo-Catholic families would conceal evidence of their religious practices (including temporary living space for the priest himself!) during the years when it was illegal._


	6. Chapter 6

I fetched the lamp from the hall again so that we would have some illumination in the passage. I noted that there was a candle left on one of the steps inside the hidden corridor; apparently whomever made use of it had planned ahead concerning light. I'd actually meant to use that candle, but Shizuru stopped me as I reached for it.

"We should try not to leave traces of our presence if it's not absolutely necessary."

I went along with it, but once the bookcase was closed behind us, the door re-locked, and we were ascending the steps, I stopped to ask about it.

"Shizuru, why are you suddenly concerned about secrecy?"

"Oh?"

"You've gone out of your way to announce to Colonel Warburton, Dr. Brayle, and Mr. Dashiell whom you are and what you're here for. At dinner you took the time and trouble to lay out your lines of reasoning, and various options that you thought were possible.

"I didn't tell them _everything_."

"You told them more than you usually tell me."

"But Natsuki is so much more fun to play with!" she said, smiling. Before I even had the chance to fume, though, the laughter went out of Shizuru's expression. "In all honesty, Natsuki, I'm acting as I am towards the Warburton family with a purpose. Colonel Warburton appears to be at a tipping point and I do not believe that he can endure a long, drawn-out affair. So, I have set the cat among the pigeons."

"I see it. You barge right in, force them to panic—and end up spitting out feathers."

"As Natsuki says."

"It almost sounds more my style than yours. But what if nothing happens?"

"Then it would be proof that a human agency is responsible, and Colonel Warburton will at least know that he is haunted by the living rather than the dead."

I supposed that I followed that reasoning, too. The shadows of a diseased mind didn't cower in the presence of a consulting detective. Neither, I figured, would a phantom. Only a person would get scared and stop their activities because they feared discovery.

"Look at the floor," Shizuru said. I did, and it was easy to see what she was driving at from our experiences in the late Mrs. Warburton's room. While the passage was generally dusty and ill-kept, even to the point of having cobwebs in the corners a broad trail down the center was swept free of dust, without even any discernible footmarks showing.

"You were right; someone has been using this."

We climbed onward. The steps didn't go all the way up to the second floor but to a kind of mezzanine between the two levels.

"There should be a fork off to our right up ahead—ah, there we are."

"How did you know that? The passage straight on leads towards the Colonel's study, where you already deduced it went, but how did you know about the side passage?"

"From the height of the ceilings in the foyer and the parlor," she explained. "They're much lower than the dining room and library. The ground floor was high enough that this passage could be built between floors, and by knowing which rooms and corridors have ceilings at which heights, I could tell roughly where the passage ran."

I nodded.

"Let's take the side path," she suggested.

The right-hand passage wound on for a short while and ended at a door, not a wall or a trick panel that happened to be obvious on this side, but a plain wooden door. It wasn't even locked.

"_Ara_, this is excellent!" Shizuru exclaimed as we passed through. "I'd expected that there would be a room near this end of the passage that he'd use for making-up, but this would have served his purpose even better. A secret room!"

It wasn't particularly romantic, as such things went: just a plain, ordinary room, with ordinary walls with slightly overdone carved moldings. There was a writing desk-against the far wall beneath a shuttered window. The shutters were on the inside and could be sealed tightly to prevent the passage of light from within the room. I undid the latch and drew back the shutters, revealing not a typical window but a rose window with ornate stained-glass panes. I recognized it as being above the main door, but from the outside with the shutters closed behind it, it had appeared very different, lacking the lustrous color that shimmered in the light.

"We must be right over the foyer," I said, closing the shutters again.

"I believe so. But look, Natsuki; this is obviously the source of the apparition in the garden."

The other furnishings in the room did, as Shizuru said, settle the matter. On the desk were several items, including a wig-stand with a woman's auburn wig; there was also a cheval-glass and on a coat-rack was carelessly hung a flowing green dress. I remembered the shade of the wig from the portrait I'd noted in the dining room, a brighter red than Gregory Dashiell's hair.

"Catherine Dashiell," I said, recalling the image of the young woman smiling brightly up at her brother, and how his protective gaze on her so differed from he haunted look he now showed in person. "Warburton's sister."

Shizuru nodded.

"The shade of hair goes well with this dress," she remarked, "so I can believe that she might have had a fondness for this color. It's not one of her actual dresses, though."

"Oh?"

"On the one hand, she died over twenty years ago. It's very unlikely that the family would have kept her clothing for that long. In addition, even if Dashiell still did have any of his wife's clothing, if you examine this particular dress's fit, it's clearly a costume piece, meant to be swiftly pulled on over other clothing and then seen only at long distances, under poor light. Given the difference in their features, I doubt even Miss Warburton could successfully make herself up enough like her late aunt to stand close scrutiny."

I pointed to the desk.

"She might try."

Shizuru came over to see what I meant. Next to the wig there appeared to be a kind of make-up kit.

"Natsuki is right in spirit; this is an actor's kit, with greasepaint, spirit gum, and the like. And here is a vial with jasmine perfume."

"So somebody is playing ghost," I said, glancing at myself in the mirror. Eerie shadows lent me a surprisingly haggard appearance, startling me. "They come in here, make themselves up, then slip out into the library, around the corner and out to the garden, where they know that they'll be seen by Colonel Warburton, whose desk is by the window. Then they come back in here, remove their disguise, and rejoin the family in proceeding to respond to the Colonel's alarm. No, wait; how can he or she do that?"

Shizuru lifted the bottle of spirit gum from the make-up kit. It looked about three-fourths empty to me. She frowned thoughtfully; then smiled and replaced the vial.

"Shizuru?"

"Come with me; let us see if we can answer your question."

We left the hidden room essentially as we'd found it and returned to the fork in the passage. Since I now knew where I was, I could notice that one place where the passage turned was likely to avoid the Grange's atrium and main staircase, which stretched through both floors and so left no room for the hidden path. We took the other corridor and followed it most of the way across the house, where it rose another half-level of stairs to an apparently blank wall. Shizuru took the lamp from me and played it over the stonework.

"Ah, here we are!" She pressed her fingers against a slot in the stone at what would be eye level for a man and a small niche opened—a peephole, I realized. "Do you recognize where we are?"

I stood on tiptoe and peeked out.

"It's the corridor just outside the Colonel's study," I realized. "Right where we smelled that perfume."

"How easy, then, to leave its scent here for the Colonel to smell, and to remember."

"But why is that?"

"If the 'ghost' can only be seen at a distance, then there is an emotional distance that is created as well. It exists, but as something observed instead of directly experienced. Leaving a familiar scent, one not associated with anyone who is supposed to be in this house, brings the 'spirit' directly into the Colonel's presence. I doubt that these are the only tricks being played, either."

She closed the peephole.

"This hidden window serves another purpose. The actor can peek out to make sure no one is in the hall before doing this."

She turned another switch and a whole section of the brickwork swung open on what I could now see were cunningly concealed hinges. We went into the hall and shut the door behind us.

"So whomever is playing ghost can either be the first person to respond or straggle in at the end," I said. "But that still doesn't tell us who it is."

Shizuru shook her head.

"Oh, that?"

"Yes, _that_. Isn't that what you're here to find out?" I couldn't understand her cavalier attitude.

"I've had a firm suspicion of that since dinner, Natsuki."

I felt like an actor in a stage play as I executed a genuine, classic double-take.

"You've had _what_?"

"It was only a suspicion. Everything that we've uncovered since, though, goes to confirm it rather than the opposite. The evidence, such as it is, was very circumstantial, though. A skillful attorney would scatter my case to the winds, though in truth I do not believe an actual crime has been committed as yet. If I am to accuse a family member, then my case must be airtight, otherwise I am not likely to be believed."

"Then how are you going to get proof?"

"By making that person provide it."

"Just like that."

She gave me her most enigmatic smile.

"I do not believe that it will be particularly difficult." The smile shifted into a slight, thoughtful frown. "Indeed, I suspect that the apparition may well cooperate, if unwittingly."

I recognized that tone. I had accompanied Shizuru on enough of her cases to know that regardless of how I asked, cajoled, or demanded, she wasn't going to tell me any more unless she needed me to do something. It might have been a reluctance to commit herself, or maybe a way of protecting her own ego and reputation for infallibility, or out of consideration for the feelings of the one she'd accuse in case she was wrong, but I doubted it. Those motives might have served for a storybook detective, but for Shizuru Viola the reason was simpler: she enjoyed teasing me. My frustration and exasperation as I tried to follow her reasoning (to her credit, she always played fair in this little game, making sure that I had whatever data she did) seemed to give her endless entertainment.

_Fine_, I decided. After all, I was only at Warburton Grange at all for her sake, anyway. If it wasn't for Shizuru, I'd have been chasing my own dead, not the Colonel's. _So let her have her fun._

I exhaled sharply, putting a little more exasperation into it than I actually felt.

"All right, then; what do we have to do?"

"First, it's time to talk to the Colonel again."

Shizuru walked to the study door and knocked, then when no one answered she knocked again. Once more there was no reply.

"In this case, I believe I shall do as Natsuki would."

"Oh?"

"Yes. Sometimes things are too important for politeness and elegance."

She then did in fact do what I would: she opened the door and walked straight in.

Warburton was seated at his desk; he jerked around in his chair at the sound of our entry.

"You! I told you to get out once already!"

"We do not have time for this, Colonel," Shizuru told him calmly. "I want you to tell me about these apparitions of your sister."

Warburton's eyes bulged; he trembled slightly. I wanted to step in, to add the additional weight of a second voice to the pressure he felt, but I was unsure of where Shizuru was taking things and so kept quiet rather than spoil whatever she was planning.

"What are you talking about? Who said anything about Catherine?"

"The conclusion was an elementary one," Shizuru remained calm in the face of his bluster.

"Don't be absurd," he barked.

"You've scented her perfume on the landing. You have seen her walk in the garden at night. You shot at her, but without effect. You dismissed the female servants in the hope that one of them was whom you saw, but it was to no avail. She keeps returning to you, back again and again, making her presence known in various ways even when she does not show herself. Can you deny it?"

He quailed, then rallied, striking his fist on the desk with enough force to make his whiskey glass rattle.

"It is none of your concern!" he roared. "I told you once to leave me be, and by God, you will! This is still my house, and you are a paid employee, no more!"

"Paid by your daughter, Colonel Warburton, who is terrified on your behalf."

He rose from his seat with a jerky, almost spasmodic movement and took two quick steps across the fantastically-colored Indian rug towards Shizuru. The violence that lingered just under the surface of the Colonel was obvious in every movement he made, and I readied myself to act if necessary. I wasn't going to let him lay a hand on Shizuru, not after she'd come all this way to help him!

"I won't say it again. My affairs are my own. Laurel is a good-hearted young lady, but there are things she can't understand. Forces at work—"

He broke off and glanced back at the window.

"It hasn't appeared yet tonight, has it?" Shizuru asked. Warburton whipped around back towards her, an expression of baffled rage on his face at the way Shizuru refused to obey him. His right hand opened and closed in sharp, almost savage movements as his anger wrestled with the sensibilities of a British officer and gentleman.

"Damn you, you interfering bitch!" he let his fury find an outlet in words instead of actions.

"Does it, then? Every night?"

His hand raised. I took a step forward, and then he let it drop back to his side. It was as if all the energy and vitality had drained out of him in an instant, his shoulders slumping, his head sagging, his entire posture growing slack. All Warburton's vital force seemed to be nothing more than the expression of his strong emotions, and once he had temporarily mastered those emotions he was left as a shadow of himself.

"Not every night," he said in a dull voice. "Only every third or fourth. But...she heralds her coming. The signs...grow closer and closer to this study. Tonight, she will appear again." His voice was thick and slurred, and I realized that he was drunk, not completely cast away, but definitely under the influence.

"At what time?" Shizuru said.

Warburton shuddered.

"When else?" he asked. "The stroke of midnight."

"Of course," Shizuru remarked as if it made complete sense to her. Maybe it did.

"Now, please, can't you just go? I don't know how you've learned so much but...but for everyone's sake, can't you just forget it? Just go, and leave me to my own damnation."

I glanced at Shizuru; she nodded.

"Very well, Colonel," she told him. "We'll leave you for now. I hope, though, to have better news for you later, and perhaps bring some peace to your household."

He looked at her with forlorn eyes, the eyes of a lost soul.

"There can be no peace in a house where the dead refuse to stay in the past."

"No," I agreed, startling Shizuru with my words or the fact I'd spoken up or both, "but it's not the house. We're the ones that the dead lay claim to."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_A/N: I don't know if any of you caught the inconsistencies in the description of the ceiling heights in the ground-floor rooms, but if you did, award yourself two gold stars. If you not only noticed it but figured that I had to have a reason for it instead of it just being the Author Not Paying Attention, then you also get a thank-you for your trust!_


	7. Chapter 7

"Midnight," I said sourly when we left Warburton to his memories. "Someone has a serious lack of imagination."

Shizuru glanced at me. I wondered if she was thinking about what I'd said in spite of myself to the Colonel.

"It would be important that the timing had significance," she said. "Most likely, Mrs. Dashiell died during the daytime. In this way, it would be impossible for the 'ghost' to appear at the hour of her death."

"Because it wouldn't stand scrutiny in the sunlight," I agreed. "So midnight is what, the default time for ghosts to walk?"

We descended the staircase back to the ground floor. The corridors in this part of the Grange were eerily bare, and the solid stone walls had a cold, forbidding aspect to them that wood did not. It was a measure of how steeped I was in the atmosphere of the house, no, of the moors generally, that I actually felt a surge of warmth when we turned into another corridor with paneled walls and the occasional hung landscape.

"Yes, I suppose it is. And the 'ghost' would be aware of Colonel Warburton's penchant for late hours, and the likelihood that most servants, perhaps the family, would be in bed. It would be dark enough at, say, eight p.m., but there would be many more people about, particularly while there were still female servants in the house as well."

"Wouldn't one of the family have noticed, though? If the 'ghost' always appears on the stroke of midnight--"

"Except that from their point of view, it doesn't."

"Excuse me?"

"Colonel Warburton told us that when the apparition of Mrs. Dashiell herself appears in the garden it is at midnight. We know, though, that the _other_ manifestations do not occur at that fixed time."

She had a point. I remembered the bellow of rage that had echoed through the house on our arrival; it must have been when Warburton had scented the jasmine perfume on the way to his study.

"I see. Since he hasn't told the family what, precisely, he is reacting _to_, they can't tell the difference between one thing happening and another, and since the 'ghost' doesn't appear every night, there's no pattern for them to notice."

Shizuru nodded.

"That's right."

"But now we know that it's going to appear tonight."

Again the nod.

"That's what you meant about the apparition providing proof, isn't it? You're planning to catch him or her in the act."

"That's right."

I turned to look at her as something odd occurred to me.

"Shizuru..."

"Yes, Natsuki?"

"How did you know the 'ghost' would walk tonight?"

"We just learned it from the Colonel."

"No, you found out at what _time_ it would appear, so you could set a trap. That's not the same thing. Is it because of what you said earlier? That the 'ghost' couldn't afford to break pattern now that we're here because it would prove that there was a person involved?" The flaw is that idea sprang out at me almost as soon as I'd said it. "But no, that can't be it. You can't tell if there's a break in a pattern until you know what the pattern is, and at that point we didn't. So how did you know?"

"I didn't know, at least not in the sense of absolute knowledge. It's more of an impression that I've gotten from the circumstances."

"That doesn't help," I said dryly.

"I'm explaining it badly," Shizuru said, a little regretfully. "What I mean is, I'm drawing a conclusion from the things we've seen and heard, but emotionally, intuitively. We all make assumptions when we reason logically, but one of my assumptions in this case is based on my emotional impression of the people and circumstances."

"I thought that detectives didn't trust intuition."

"Quite the opposite. Hunches and gut instincts are born of experience and knowledge. Intuition is nothing more than the mind catching such small details and putting them into place. It is only unreliable for an untrained mind or in areas where one has no familiarity. Of course, it's necessary to check what one's intuition is telling one against the facts, but often it points the way to the correct results."

"I see."

She smiled at me.

"I think that what you mean is that space where people rely on intuition but they do not have any real understanding of the situation, so their intuitive conclusions are drawn not from the relevant facts, but from their fears and prejudices or some other entirely unrelated circumstances. This is why you often hear people speak scornfully of intuition."

"When you explain it that way," I admitted, "it makes sense." What it didn't do was to answer my initial question, and I had a feeling that she wasn't going to, not yet.

"So this trap," I continued, "how are we going to arrange it?"

"By concealing ourselves in the garden," she said. "The library and the passage don't offer a suitable hiding place, and it's absolutely necessary to catch our apparition in the act."

"Why not wait in the hidden room over the foyer, then? When he comes in to get changed, we jump him?"

Shizuru shook her head.

"We would be noticed at once. The 'ghost' could argue that--like us!--they had just thought of the passage and sought to check it out on their own. Just because it had gone unused for some time does not mean that it is a 'secret' representing guilty knowledge. It would work if we caught the 'ghost' returning to the room to remove the costume, but the timing to slip in while they were out would be too delicate. The garden offers us the best place of concealment."

"Not to mention the best chance of being shot by the man we're trying to help," I grumbled.

"Natsuki, that is hardly likely."

She was right, of course. Mostly I just didn't want to be standing vigil in the cold and damp of a foggy October night. But of course, that's exactly what ended up happening, the two of us crouching in the shrubbery as threads of mist drifted like silver shadows through the garden. We were concealed by the wall next to us that buried our hiding place in darkness as well as by the bushes; the only way someone would know where we were was if they had watched us take up our position from a window. I huddled into my coat, as the moorland air was biting and indeed carried all the dampness of the bogs that I knew lurked beyond the wall.

Maybe it was just that Dartmoor was unfamiliar territory, but the mist seemed somehow different than London's. Of course, it didn't have that yellow tint the city's gaslight and coal-smoke lent the London fog. Perhaps that was the difference: the city was humanity's domain. On the moor, other forces held sway, older forces. I had to remind myself sharply that I was being fanciful. Besides which, whatever I was about to face at midnight wasn't born from out there, but spawned from the human interactions within these four walls.

"I really have some scruples about asking you to join me," Shizuru had said while we were getting ready in my room.

"Why? You think if I actually see the person it might give me too big a hint as to who's responsible?" I'd groused.

"I'm not teasing, Natsuki. There may very well be danger. I can only speculate as to the person's motive, and without solid information I can't predict in what way our 'ghost' will react to being caught. There may be violence."

"And you think...what? That I'm afraid?"

"I think that you're risking being hurt or even killed while trying to help me! This is not your job at all; you're only here as a favor to me, and--"

"Shizuru, do you seriously think that if it's so damn dangerous for the two of us together that I'd let you go face it alone? We're in this together, and that's that."

"Natsuki..."

_Me and my big mouth_, I was now thinking. If I'd taken Shizuru's offer, I could be tucked up in a warm bed instead of a cold azalea or whatever it was. But I was just grousing for its own sake, I knew, not out of any serious desire to be anywhere else, and at least some part of me was eager, even excited at the chance to settle this matter.

Since I could well be facing a possibly armed and dangerous criminal, I'd taken the precaution of bringing my revolvers. My willingness to stand by Shizuru and face potential danger wasn't solely based on courage and friendship, after all.

"Warburton should have done this himself," I murmured in a low voice. It was another thief's trick that I'd picked up from my underworld connections; a whisper actually carried farther and was more easily overheard than a normal voice at low volume.

"It is my job to investigate these matters on behalf of the client," Shizuru replied, apparently knowing the same trick.

"Not tonight. I mean, before now. He was willing enough to fire a shot at the apparition, and he can predict when she'll appear. Why didn't he set a trap for the 'ghost' like we are?"

"Fear, perhaps. Whatever compels him to keep silent to his family about the ghost's identity might also render him hesitant and frightened, mentally unable to take decisive action. Or it might be a flaw of the imagination."

"You mean, he doesn't have enough to realize that he can do something other than wait and suffer?"

"Or perhaps he has too much imagination. Unlike Natsuki, who refuses to believe in ghosts and simply lays in wait for a human adversary, the Colonel may be able to accept the possibility and so is held back by the belief that it is a genuine supernatural manifestation."

"By which you're saying I'm not bright enough to be fooled?" I managed to put sarcasm into my tone without raising my voice.

"_Ara_, I am sure that can't be the proper interpretation."

"Yeah, right."

"In any case, it is also possible that Colonel Warburton did in fact attempt to trap the spectre, only to have her not appear. Were I to play ghost, I should take care that my audience was properly seated for the performance."

"In other words, check to see that the Colonel actually was in the study at the time before dressing up." I nodded, though I didn't know if she could see the gesture. "If he was out here laying in wait, the 'ghost' would just put it off for another night."

"Yes, exactly. To you or I that might suggest a human adversary, but to a mind already troubled by fear, I think it would only serve to increase the atmosphere of tension."

Even as we prepared to find out, I couldn't help but wonder who it was that we were laying in wait for. Shizuru claimed to know, and from my experience with her I was sure that she did, but for my part I couldn't see how.

Was it Dr. Brayle? He'd been present for all the known appearances even though he didn't live at the Grange. I doubted that was coincidence, but it might be that someone was trying to frame him. Or, another idea suddenly came to me, he might be wanted as a witness, medical authority to see the Colonel's breakdown. His reluctance to accept that there might be hope for Warburton seemed suspicious, and yet he didn't seem to have a motive, be it personal, financial, or romantic.

Motive, on the other hand, seemed the strongest point against Dashiell, who'd been a family member the longest and had actually been married to the woman whose identity the "ghost" assumed. That gave him by far the best chance to have some grudge against the Colonel and the knowledge to act on it. Still, I had no hint of any actual malice, and the russet-bearded, square-framed Dashiell made an even less likely woman than the tall figure of Dr. Brayle.

Shizuru's client, on the other hand, actually was a woman and would be far more believable in the role even given the presence of distance and darkness. As a family member, she'd be more likely than her fiance to have knowledge of guilty secrets. Yet, Catherine Dashiell had died before she'd even been born; would she know her well enough, perhaps from her uncle-in-law's stories, to convincingly play the part, to know what to use to pull at her father's will? Plus, she'd been the one to hire Shizuru. Could she be so overconfident that she expected to keep up her act under outside scrutiny?

Then there was Ashworth. His service with the Colonel in India meant that that he knew things—including potential motives—that none of the family would know. But in that case, why appear as the sister? Wouldn't his purpose be to carry out that past vengeance?

It was all too confusing. At least I thought I could rule out the other servants, such as the sour-faced driver or the footmen who'd served the meal. Shizuru hadn't so much as spoken a word to or about them, which implied that she didn't consider them as potential suspects. Was she missing a bet there? A long-time retainer might have a grudge as well as knowledge of family matters and the secrets of the house. Or some enemy might have come to work at the Grange to infiltrate it—or a servant might be a confederate or paid lackey of someone else. But then, maybe Shizuru had a good reason to believe that guilt lay elsewhere.

Dinner, she'd said, was where she'd first had a suspicion of who was responsible. But what had happened at dinner? Was it something she'd seen in the room, or about one of the people, or something somebody had said? Maybe it was a combination of different things. I just didn't know; no matter how many times I turned it over in my head I couldn't see anything that pointed the finger of guilt at any particular individual.

I had gotten so caught up in my thoughts that I stopped noticing the discomfort of the weather or the passage of time, which lent me a ghost of an idea as to why Shizuru was always able to stay so calm. I was only jolted out of it by the chiming of a clock echoing from across the moor. No doubt it was from Aldington, perhaps the village church, but it made for an eerie recall to my surroundings as the twelve chimes drifted in as if from the outer darkness.

Then, as the last chime died away, the door opened. It was slow and stealthy, and no light showed from behind it. The hall lamp had no doubt been put out so that no gleam from within the house would spoil the effect; only the fact that our eyes were adjusted to the dark from our vigil let us see it so clearly.

Then she emerged. The long hair, the flowing dress, their bright colors were muted by the darkness but my mind filled them in easily enough from having seen them upstairs, as no doubt Colonel Warburton's mind filled them in from his memory of Catherine's life. The apparition's movements were slow, with an unearthly languidness about them that added to the unreality of the effect, and also helped to disguise anything about the impersonator's walk, particularly if male, that might have given the game away.

I came bolt upright, my right hand smoothly drawing its revolver as I moved.

"Halt or I'll fire!" I snapped loudly, cutting through the mist and moonlight with stark reality. The feel of the gun butt in my hand chased away any lingering feelings of unearthliness, driving home to me that here was a human being playing cruel tricks, not a spirit.

Reflexively, the "ghost" looked towards me, and I saw fear and rage flicker across its features, distorting them. Recognizing the situation, though, it turned and bolted back inside, realizing that I wouldn't really shoot unless attacked. I sprang after it, clawing through the bushes and setting off at a dead run. The apparition was just turning the corner as I got through the door; I was gaining on it quickly for the same reason Shizuru was falling behind me in the pursuit: my male costume was far better suited for running than skirts.

I followed my quarry into the library, where it was no doubt trying to vanish into the secret passage, even lock it behind itself, but I was too quick for it. As it pulled on the carving to open the door, I dove at it. My shoulder crashed into its back, driving it up against the bookcase and pushing the secret door shut again; I heard the latch click to. He grunted in pain, confirming what I'd already realized from his build when I'd hit him, but spun, lashing out with a heavy fist swung in a backhanded roundhouse at my head. I ducked, but his other hand drove a short jab at my belly which connected. He hadn't been able to put his full strength into the blow, and I countered at once with a jab to his face that bloodied his nose.

He came back at me with a couple more quick punches that showed he had at least an amateur's knowledge of boxing, but his dress hampered his footwork and I was able to slip both blows, then drive the heel of my hand into his chin, knocking him back a step into the bookcase.

Sensing his weakness, I slashed my boot out into a short, whipping arc that ended with a hard strike on his knee. It buckled, and he fought for balance, but before he could regain it I stepped in and cracked my gun against the side of his head. He toppled over, crashing to the floor where he lay, stunned.

"That was very impressive, Natsuki," Shizuru said, genuine admiration in her voice.

I brushed my hair out of my eyes; one down side to wearing it long and loose was that it flew around and got in the way when I did anything active.

"I've been in my share of bar brawls and back-alley fights," I said. What I'd done wasn't exactly by Marquis of Queensberry rules, but when you're used to fighting people who outweigh you by fifty to a hundred pounds, you don't put a high value on sportsmanship.

"Well, you learned very well. I am a little surprised that he tried to run, but shock and panic will do that to a person sometimes."

I nodded, though I was only agreeing with the second part of her statement. The impostor Catherine running made complete sense to me, so I wondered why Shizuru thought otherwise.

"You can put that away, Natsuki," she advised. "I don't think our 'ghost' will give us any more trouble."

"No, no I won't," the man said in a dull groan. I holstered my revolver as he pushed himself to his hands and knees, then yanked the wig, which had been knocked half-askew, off his head. A trickle of blood was flowing from a cut in his temple where I'd struck him with the pistol, and Shizuru drew a handkerchief from her sleeve and offered it. He shook his head and dabbed at the wound with his own as he got to his feet.

"Good," Shizuru said. "It's time we got this all sorted out."

Only when he was standing upright again, though, with the wig off and looking right at us, did I fully recognize the face that went with the voice, as I placed the unexpectedly clean-shaven features of Gregory Dashiell.


	8. Chapter 8

Somewhat to my surprise, Shizuru did not take Dashiell to her client or call the family together to expose him. She didn't even start to question him about his motives for playing ghost. Instead, she had me bring him through the secret passage to Colonel Warburton's study. This time, she didn't even bother knocking, but walked right in.

"Colonel," she announced, "I'd like you to meet your ghost."

I ushered Dashiell into the room and shut the door behind us. Warburton stared with wide-open eyes at his brother-in-law.

"Hello, Bennet," Dashiell said, a faint smile playing about his lips.

"_You_! Then--?"

"No, Colonel, it wasn't a ghost, even if you were afraid it ought to be one."

"But...but..."

"Why?" Shizuru finished for him again. "I thought it might be best to discuss that ourselves and in private before bringing the others into it."

Warburton nodded.

"Yes, yes, of course. Thank you, Miss Viola. You and your associate can go now."

"_Ara_, but Colonel, I would be remiss in my duty to my client if I did not stay to establish the entire truth," Shizuru said with wide-eyed innocence. Warburton blanched and Dashiell chuckled harshly.

"Yes, Bennet, let them stay. I certainly trust the sound judgment of someone who could see through my little trick."

Dashiell reached around to his back and started to unhook the green dress. As we'd seen before, it was strictly a costume piece; beneath it he had on his trousers and shirtsleeves, having only had to remove his jacket—and what I now realized was a false beard—when he prepared. He folded the dress over the back of a chair, then went to the sideboard and poured himself two fingers of Scotch, neat.

"It's not an unusual story on the face of it, really. I'm sure Miss Viola can hazard a guess." He took a stiff drink.

Shizuru shook her head.

"I try not to guess. Logical speculation is one thing, but guessing is a shocking habit and in very poor form for one in my profession. And there was no reason to guess when I knew I could simply catch you and have you tell us."

"You knew that I was the one playing ghost?"

"When I hear of a female apparition haunting a house, and then I meet a man with a false beard, there is a strong chance of a correlation, which was confirmed when I found a well-used bottle of spirit gum among the 'ghost's' make-up supplies. Spirit gum is used by actors to attach various false properties, but we knew that the 'ghost' didn't appear at close range where such a thing would be necessary. Therefore, the make-up did not apply to the ghost act but to the actor's day-to-day life."

Dashiell regarded her curiously.

"You recognized that my beard was false? I had thought that I'd applied it most carefully. Certainly, none of the family had ever noticed."

Shizuru shook her head.

"It wasn't how you were wearing it, and you did an excellent job matching the color to your natural hair. The problem was the absence of gray. Almost invariably, facial hair will be among the first to show gray, and I could not but help notice that a man with notably graying hair had no gray in his beard. I therefore examined you closely and recognized the telltale signs of make-up."

"I see."

I should have seen it myself, I thought. I'd taken note of Dashiell's appearance, but just set aside the hair color as a quirk of nature without drawing any conclusions from it.

"You know, I thought that you were supposed to be answering Shizuru's questions, not the other way around," I said.

"True, Miss Kuga. Shall we be seated? We may want to be comfortable." Shizuru took the invitation, and Dashiell followed suit. As usual, I didn't seem to count in anybody's "gentlemen do not sit while a woman is standing" analysis which in this case suited me fine. I leaned up against the doorjamb, folding my arms across my chest.

"Well, Mr. Dashiell?" Shizuru prompted.

He lifted his glass to his lips and took a sip. Dashiell's eyes flickered to Warburton, who was sitting stock-still as if frozen in terror, and for an instant a faint, cruel smile played about his fleshy lips.

"I shall say it plainly: Bennet Warburton murdered my wife."

Warburton sagged back in his chair. The thunderbolt had struck, and the anticipation, the tension, had drained out of him. To me, his reaction said a lot. He'd been expecting what Dashiell had announced. Which implied that it was probably true—or at least that he knew Dashiell believed it. No wonder he'd tried to get us to leave.

"I believed...everyone believed...that she'd died in a fall from our bedroom window. It's a casement window, so it was believable, nothing more than a tragic accident. But the truth is that Warburton broke her neck with his own hands and then pushed her dead body out the window to make it seem as if the fall had been responsible.

"I'd have gone on believing the lie had it not been for Mrs. Warburton's death. The grief drove Bennet wild, nearly out of his mind. The night she died, it all came out of him in a frenzy: anger, terror, laments, all of it. He stood at her bedside and he told her corpse everything. You see, he'd come to love Elizabeth, even though he'd originally married her for money and status." He glanced at Warburton and smiled thinly, mockingly. "You didn't realize that I'd been coming up to check on you—or that when I heard some of what you were saying, I concealed myself in your bedroom and listened through the connecting door."

Warburton stared at him with eyes that seemed almost stricken, his gaze silently pleading with his brother-in-law.

"Will you tell them why you killed her, Bennet, or shall I do it?"

The Colonel clutched at the edge of the desk, fingers gripping tightly enough that they slowly turned while, like a drowning man clinging to support. His big head moved back and forth slowly, pleading with his accuser to remain silent. Dashiell, though, would not be swayed.

"She was in love with him, you see."

"His own _sister_?" I exclaimed, incredulous.

"Yes," Dashiell said softly, all the supercilious cruelty he'd been directing at Warburton draining away as he spoke. "It began in their terms. He was three years older, handsome, dashing, all the things a woman looks for in a prince. I don't know what it was that drove him, but he took advantage of her, seduced her—"

"_She_ was the one who seduced _me_!" Warburton found his voice. "It was like she was possessed! That was why I joined a regiment to be posted in India, to get away from the vixen!"

"It was a silly schoolgirl's admiration like a thousand girls have every year, but you, you fanned it into something else, something to slake your perverse and disgusting lusts!"

"It wasn't like that, I tell you! The woman was a witch, a--"

"You knew about it already, didn't you?" Shizuru cut the Colonel off, though it was Dashiell she addressed her question to.

"Yes, I did," he said. "Catherine confessed it all to me before we married. She did not want to deceive me into taking what she referred to as an 'impure' bride."

"But you married her anyway."

Dashiell spread his hands helplessly.

"I was in love. What was I to do? Lie to myself and say I was not? And I believe that she loved me as well, regardless of the compulsion he had infected her with. At least, we were happy together for over a dozen years. And what love is free of all troubles?"

Shizuru's expression was gentle, even sorrowful as she regarded him. I didn't know what to think, for my own part. I didn't have brothers or sisters, and if I'd had, I couldn't imagine myself desiring one sexually. The idea made my skin crawl. And while I had to be impressed at the strength of a love that could see past that I couldn't really understand it, not in my gut. It'd be one thing if it had been rape, where the victim wasn't at fault, but to lay naked with someone, put his hands on her when she'd willingly...I remembered again the portrait of the two siblings in the dining room and my gorge rose at the thought of what lay behind those fond smiles.

"I understand," Shizuru told him. "If you truly love a person, then you accept them for who they are, not just the aspects that you like."

"It would have all been well," he said, "had Bennet not come home from India. I...I had hoped that time would have dulled the feelings between them, but I could see the spark there."

"It was like a drug," Warburton sobbed, "like the craving of an opium addict for his next pipe! The first night I slept under my own roof she crawled into my bed! The _first night_! She was a witch, I tell you, who'd put a spell on me!"

"The affair, if you can call it something so mundane as that, continued all summer and into the fall, until at last came her death. Catherine never talked to me about it, of course, never admitted what was happening, but I could see how it tormented her. I...I'd always suspected that she had taken her own life in order to be free of it all, the strain of the deceit and her terrible passions."

He swung his head toward Warburton, and the tenderness and sorrow he'd shown while talking of his wife were replaced by a searing hatred.

"But that was before I learned what this fiend had done. Since he was unable to resist the temptation, he destroyed its object."

Dashiell took a deep breath.

"I thought at first that his grief might finish him. He was crushed by Elizabeth's death and I considered that to be only poetic justice. But in the end his soul was too small and petty to let emotion for another bring him down, and I determined to have justice."

"So you played ghost."

"It took me some time to think of it, not just the idea but also the way in which I would carry it out, and to assemble the necessary materials without raising questions. But I was ready at last, and begun my work on the very day that Catherine died. She would be the instrument of her own vengeance."

"Vengeance!" Colonel Warburton howled. "You call it vengeance? She was a succubus who trapped me in her web! Twenty years on a foreign continent could not break her spell, so I took the only way out that I could. I had to be free!"

"Free of what you yourself created!" Dashiell snapped, literally trembling with rage. With effort, though, he seemed to master himself. "I'd hoped to make you feel the weight of your own guilt, but it's over now. At least by the time this is done, your filthy secret will be out, and everyone will know you for the monster that you are."

"What--? What are you--?"

"Colonel Warburton, you've confessed to murder in front of three witnesses, two of them completely independent of the matter," Shizuru told him plainly. "Surely you cannot expect this to pass by?"

Warburton stared at her, then back to Dashiell in stupefied horror.

"You...you can't be serious! It's you who's been haunting me, driving me out of my mind!" He pointed at his brother-in-law, his finger trembling.

"I've done nothing illegal," Dashiell snapped back, "while _you_...It's not the justice that I wanted, but it will suffice."

"But this will mean that it will all come out, the entire story. What will happen to Laurel then?"

"Can you believe it? After all this, he wants us to think he cares for anything but his own neck!" Dashiell barked.

"Do you, Colonel?" Shizuru asked, rising to her feet. "Do you really want to spare Laurel the reputation of being the daughter of an incestuous murderer?" Her voice was softer now, almost kind, but there was still steel beneath the velvet that made us all realize that the question was a completely serious matter, not meant rhetorically or mockingly or as a threat.

"No...no, for God's sake! She's innocent of all this! Isn't there a way to spare her?"

"After what you've done, you want us to let you go for her sake?" I exclaimed incredulously. I couldn't believe his gall. Warburton didn't even look at me, though; his eyes stayed on Shizuru as if transfixed.

"Please," he urged. "Please, promise me that you'll say nothing of this to her."

Shizuru regarded him silently for a long moment, then at last nodded.

"I shall not, and Natsuki also."

Something like relief came into Colonel Warburton's features.

"Thank you," he said. In the next instant, he reached for the heavy military revolver which still lay on the desk, his fingers curling around the walnut butt. I snatched at one of my own guns, but Shizuru's hand fell on my forearm and she shook her head. Since Warburton made no move to raise or even aim the pistol, I let Shizuru guide me. Dashiell rose to his feet.

"Come, Natsuki, let us go," Shizuru said, and first Dashiell than she withdrew from the study, with me bringing up the end due to my refusal to take my eyes off him should he mean to try to eliminate the witnesses to his confession. But that wasn't it, and we swung the heavy door shut behind us.

A moment later, we heard a shot.

"What will you tell Laurel?" Dashiell asked. "She is your client."

"The truth," Shizuru said.

"What? But you promised--?" I said, catching up only now to the point of that exchange.

"I will tell Miss Warburton that her father was haunted by the past, which deluded him into mistaking ordinary, natural phenomena for the presence of a ghost, and that in the end he could no longer bear it."

Dashiell nodded.

"It will be hard for her."

Shizuru looked at him.

"She loves her father, and love inevitably means that we will suffer at times."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

We did not spend the night at the Grange, even though it was nearly two by the time we were finished with explanations. Miss Warburton protested for hospitality's sake, but I could tell that our continuing presence was a painful reminder to her, and she didn't protest as strongly as otherwise she might have. The horse and trap were fetched, and a letter written to the keeper of the King's Arms in the village, who might otherwise not appreciate two strangers knocking him up at such an ungodly hour.

Apparently, the patronage of the Warburtons went a long way in Aldington, for the beefy, round-faced landlord's eyes lit up and his face took on a merry smile like an illustration of Father Christmas upon reading the letter, and he not only offered no complaints about the hour but even agreed to Shizuru's request for a pot of tea without a moment's hesitation.

"I can't believe you're drinking tea at three in the morning," I said, sitting on my bed as I levered my boots off.

"But Natsuki, I haven't had a cup since I left London!" she protested with a little pout.

"You won't be able to sleep a wink."

"Natsuki is always saying that I do not sleep anyway."

"Good point." I got the second boot off and wiggled my toes. My feet ached a little on top of everything else, and I had a fair amount of walking to do tomorrow—or later today, I should have said.

"Shizuru..."

"Yes, Natsuki?"

"Can you explain something to me?"

She nodded.

"I believe so."

"All right. I understand about the false beard. But you said that your suspicions were confirmed by what we found later on. You knew, not just believed, that it was Dashiell playing ghost."

She nodded again.

"And Natsuki would like to know how?"

"Natsuki probably won't be able to sleep without knowing how," I said bluntly.

"Well, we can't have that. Let me see: I began by being suspicious of Dashiell due to what _looked _like a false beard, but that was not proof. It might have been that he was one of the rare exceptions to the general rule for facial hair graying, or that for some reason he used hair-dye, or even that he might have some other reason for the beard unrelated to the case."

"I follow that."

She sipped tea, holding the cup just below her lips to savor the aroma for a moment before drinking.

"We learned that the secret passage which the false ghost employed was not in general use. Do you recall the dust and cobwebs? If it was common knowledge, treated as just another corridor in the house, it would have been swept routinely. But, as was clear _this_ generation of Warburtons made no use of it, had perhaps even forgotten it, and Dashiell was the estate manager. Keys, house plans, and the like would fall within his purview. He had already displayed his knowledge of the house's history when he told us about the fountain, and it was also suspicious that he did not go on to mention the passageway when discussing the folly, since it was a far more interesting point. But then again, I hadn't asked, and he was not in a mood to cooperate in any case."

She sipped tea again.

"The items we found in the hidden room, though, provided the final confirmation. The identity of the ghost as Catherine Dashiell suggested that the widower would have the strongest motive. The spirit gum, as you already know, confirmed my suspicion about a fake beard, and the dress eliminated Dr. Brayle outright from suspicion."

"It did? How?"

"Its size. While a costume dress might well fit badly if not expected to pass close scrutiny, it at least had to be long enough that six inches of trousered legs didn't show below the hem. Dr. Brayle was too tall to wear it properly."

I nodded. I wished now that I'd taken a closer look at the dress; I'd have noticed that myself if I had. But I hadn't looked, which I supposed was part of why she was the consulting detective. In a few short hours she'd investigated, found evidence, revealed the culprit, and exposed a murder.

"It almost seems too easy," I reflected, amazed at how quickly things had gone.

Shizuru's answer to what hadn't even been a question came as a distinct surprise.

"I had wondered if Natsuki had noticed that."

"Yeah, it's almost like—wait, what?"

She set her empty teacup down; it made a soft clink in the saucer.

"The case was too easy to solve. The evidence was not nearly well-concealed enough. And even after I was brought in, Dashiell did not make even rudimentary changes to his plan."

"So what are you saying? It can't be a frame; we caught him in the act. Was he deliberately protecting someone else?"

Shizuru shook her head.

"No, I don't think so. There is no evidence of that, and his manner at the end seemed completely genuine. It is a clever thought, though, Natsuki."

"Just a wrong one," I muttered. "So what _do_ you mean?"

She poured herself another cup of tea, the lateness of the hour apparently not concerning her at all.

"Put yourself in Dashiell's place for a moment, Natsuki. You have overheard your brother-in-law confess to murdering your wife, his sister, to free himself from their passionate affair so he'd be free to marry well."

I nodded.

"What would happen if you came forward and accused him?"

"I suppose that it'd be his word against mine."

"Correct. The crime was over twenty years ago and there were no witnesses, and at this late date the victim's body would provide no physical evidence in the current state of medical science. Furthermore, your story accuses Colonel Warburton of an incestuous affair, a shocking and forbidden act. If guilt does not lead him to confess, it is _you_ who would be deemed mad for making up such a story. I'm sure that 'delusional' would be the kindest description applied to you."

"I see your point."

"Now, consider again. Rather than accuse the Colonel, you plan and carry out an elaborate and Gothic scheme of revenge, meant to torment the killer with his guilty knowledge. You are caught in the act, and you explain your behavior."

It began to dawn on me what she was getting at.

"You're saying that Dashiell would be believed, because of what he was doing?"

Shizuru smiled at me.

"Exactly. Who, the logic would go, would go to such lengths without some powerful, genuine reason for doing so? The mere fact that he was carrying out his revenge implies that he had something to be revenged _for_." She sipped tea again. "Did Natsuki ever doubt Dashiell's story of incest and murder?"

"No, I didn't...Wait, Shizuru, you're not implying that he was making it up?"

"No, of course not. Colonel Warburton _confessed_, don't you recall?"

"Oh, yes." I sighed with relief. The whole business had been horrid enough without adding in the possibility that Warburton's suicide had been undeserved. "Sorry; I was distracted by the implication."

She nodded.

"_Kannin na_; I was unclear. But my point stands—by being caught playing ghost, the burden of proof shifts from the accuser to the accused in the minds of everyone else. Warburton would have been ruined, the scandal run through the neighborhood like wildfire. Even his daughter would have believed it. His life would have been over for all practical purposes, even if he didn't take the final step that he did in reality."

I yawned.

"I must be getting tired, Shizuru. I follow everything that you're saying, but I don't really understand what you're trying to imply."

"My intuitive conclusion: Dashiell's playing ghost in a fairly obvious way, using a secret passage that was unused but not necessarily unknown. I'm sure that Colonel Warburton himself, for example, knew that there actually was a secret passage in the house. There was Dashiell's willingness to face gunfire, although I doubt that a terrified man, his aim further dulled by alcohol, would have much luck hitting a target thirty yards or so away in the nighttime. There was the fact that he took no precautions to thwart the two of us." She shook her head. "No, all along, I've had the feeling that whomever was haunting the Colonel would have been glad to be caught in the act. And after all, it was Dashiell being exposed that led Warburton to confess to the murder, and so be forced to choose between a bullet or the hangman's rope. Thanks to me, Dashiell achieved his vengeance quite nicely. To paraphrase Edgar Allan Poe, he's managed to make the Colonel know _why_ vengeance has come for him, see his enemy dead, and get off scot-free himself. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if Dashiell dropped a hint or two in Miss Warburton's ear about hiring a detective in the first place."

"Doesn't it bother you, to be used like that?"

Shizuru sipped her tea. When she spoke, her gaze was intent, the scarlet of her eyes catching glints from the fire.

"Gregory Dashiell loved his wife. It didn't matter to him that she'd carried on an affair that would revolt and disgust most people, or that she couldn't stay away from it even years later. When he found that she had been betrayed and murdered, he didn't hesitate, but went to great lengths to make sure that justice would be done, without making himself into another victim by, say, simply shooting the Colonel. No, in this case, Natsuki, my sympathies are entirely with Dashiell."

I shrugged.

"Maybe you're right." She had a point, and yet..._I ought to be agreeing with her,_ I thought. _Speaking favorably of a man's revenge against a murderer._

Could that be it? Did it actually _bother_ me that she approved? Did I think she was supposed to argue against it?

It didn't make any sense, and I was so tired anyway.

"Shizuru, tomorrow I'll have to take care of my own affair."

She nodded.

"I understand. Does Natsuki think she will be long?"

"It shouldn't take more than a day, so I should be back in London the day after tomorrow."

"I see." She recognized the dismissal for what it was, and did not offer to join me as I'd done for her trip to Warburton Grange. "May I wish you good luck on your errand?"

I smiled back at her, grateful for her well-wishes and grateful, too, that she knew where to draw the line between us. "Yeah, I'd...I'd like that."

"Very well; I hope that Natsuki is fortunate in her own forbidden love."

"It's nothing like that!" I exclaimed.

Shizuru's teasing grin grew wider.

"But Natsuki did call it an 'affair.'"

"Idiot! Not that kind!"

My face was flaming as I threw myself down on the bed to the sound of Shizuru's laughter, but at least for that night, my sleep was free of ghosts.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_A/N: For the curious, Shizuru is referring to "The Cask of Amontillado."_


	9. Chapter 9

Michael West's cottage wasn't big—bedroom, living room, and a kitchen that was more of an alcove than a full room of its own. It had, however, the cozy, lived-in feeling of home: personal touches like a driftwood sculpture on the mantel, dishes left unwashed in the sink in the firm knowledge that they could be done later, a tin of tea in easy reach of the stove and kettle, a lap blanket casually thrown over the arm of a rocking chair where it had been tossed when the occupant stood up.

It was a snug, peaceful home, a home whose only hint that its occupant wasn't content or at ease was that he didn't share it with anyone else, not even a dog or cat. But some people were that way. Not everyone who scorned close companionship did so because of some past sorrow that made them push people away.

Nothing in the cottage suggested to a casual observer that Michael West might be a haunted man.

He didn't even keep the door locked.

While he didn't socialize often with his neighbors, one of West's habits that they did know was that he was prone to walking. Long, rambling afternoon hikes every day into the evening were his way, covering several miles in the rolling gait that still spoke of the sea even after fourteen years on the moor. Though in its way the moor was like a sea, still wild and untamed despite humans crossing it. Now in November he would return to the cottage in twilight, leaving only a tiny bit of light among the shadows inside. He opened the door and stepped in, reaching for the matches and candle he kept on a small table for just this reason.

Before he could reach them, a spark flared, the pinprick glow of the oil lamp surging into bright flame as the wick was turned up.

"Hello, Mr. West. Come in."

My right hand was still on the lamp key. My left hand was pointing a revolver directly at him as a deterrent against casual stupidity. But he wasn't looking at the gun. I doubt that he even knew that it was there. His gaze was fixed on my face while his own went ashen pale, eerie against the brick red of his bristling muttonchops.

"Y-you!"

We'd never met. Probably not even at _that_ time—a ship's purser and a child of five.

But I'd seen photographs.

We looked almost the same.

Oh, yes. Despite what the cottage told, Michael West was a haunted man. His limbs seemed frozen and rigid, while his hands trembled. Shock and fear stared at me from his eyes.

I slid from the chair.

"S-stay back!" he stammered.

I'd had enough of ghosts at Warburton Grange. And this particular ghost was _mine_. West had no right to her, and I wasn't going to share. I raised the pistol into his line of vision. I've read too many yellow-backed novels not to know that a gun has its own romance, but it wasn't the romance of the supernatural. The fear it caused was not the spectre of old memories and divine justice. I knew of nothing more immediate and brutal, more _here and now_ than the threat of hot lead.

It was a miscalculation. Shizuru would have handled it differently, I'm sure, deftly played on his fears to get him to talk without ever pushing him over the edge into panic. I'd botched it, though. All I did was add a threat on top of West's fear, and at the same time grounded that threat in reality.

He lunged, pivoting to my right side away from my gun hand while at the same time pulling a knife. I could have shot him even so, but I hesitated. What I wanted from West was what he knew, not his life. If I was honest, that might come later, depending on what he said. Not now. Not before I _knew._

That didn't mean I was defenseless. He was right-handed, so the knife was on the side nearer to me and coming in on an arc, not a straight stab. I turned out away from his body and caught his wrist in my hand, pushing it down as my knee came up. The force of my leg going one way was added to by the power of his swing going the other; he gave a sharp cry and the knife tumbled from numbed fingers. I kicked it away, well out of his reach.

West threw a punch with his left hand, a big, looping roundhouse that would have hurt a lot—_if_ it had hit. I released his wrist so I could slip the punch, then brought my foot up into his exposed abdomen. He grunted, slumping as the breath was driven out of him, and I stepped in with two quick strikes that sent him reeling back. He crashed against the corner of the mantel, his shoulder dislodging a tin box that struck the hearth and spilled loose contents over the fireplace rug, scattered slips of yellowed paper.

He came back at me with a bellow, but I caught his arm again and used his own momentum against him, pitching him over my him to slam hard on his back on the plank floor. He twitched, but didn't try to immediately rise.

"I'm not here to kill you, West," I said, "unless you make me."

"Then what the hell do you want, you damned ghost?" he spat back. Despite his retort, there was no real defiance in his voice, just a sullen resignation. The majority of the fight had gone out of him.

"If you're calling me a ghost, then you know what I want."

He sighed heavily.

"I knew it would come for me some day." He rolled over, grunting from the aches as he did so, and pushed himself up to his knees. "You're here about the _Friesland_."

"I am."

He stared at me again, trying to take in everything he saw and not quite believing it.

"You look just like her."

I picked up one of the loose slips of paper that had been spilled. It was a newspaper cutting, one of several. **"Tragic Accident at Sea"** was the headline, and the story told how Saeko Kuga, 26, naturalized British subject, had fallen from the rail en route from Hamburg to Liverpool. "'She is survived by a daughter,'" I finished reading aloud.

"And so you found me. I knew someone would. Even after fourteen years."

He grunted, getting to his feet in slow, pained motions. I stepped back as he did, making sure that he couldn't make a grab for the gun. I wasn't letting my guard down, even now.

"I want to know everything."

"Lemme get a drink."

I nodded, and watched while he went into the kitchen and took a bottle and a glass from one of the cupboards. He pulled the cork and poured cheap rum into the glass, then dropped into a chair at the kitchen table. I didn't sit, but leaned up against the doorjamb. West took a deep swig of the harsh spirit, then set down the glass, curling his hands around it.

"You have to believe me. I didn't know what they did. I didn't!" he protested. His eyes pled with me. I ignored him, my expression a mask of anger. After about ten seconds he gave up and gulped more rum.

"There were two of them, two men. Englishmen," he added. "That's actually the first thing they said, that they'd approached me because I was English, too. The _Friesland_ was Dutch, you see, as was most of her crew. My assistant was, and he could have given them the same thing. By God, I wish they'd gone to him instead!"

He shuddered in his chair.

"I thought they were thieves, that's all. Or maybe spies. Something like that. They looked ordinary enough." He sighed. "Mrs. Kuga had checked a bag"--it was actually _Miss_ Kuga, but I knew that my mother had sometimes pretended to be married since she had a child in tow--"when we first embarked in Hamburg. The men knew about it. They wanted it. They offered me money."

"You stole the items entrusted to you as purser. How much? How much did you sell your duty out for?" I spat at him.

West licked nervously at his roughened lips.

"Seven hundred and fifty pounds," he whispered. "_Seven hundred and fifty pounds_ in gold and banknotes! I'd never seen so much money before in my life!"

That was a year's income for a middle-class family. West was telling the truth when he said he'd never seen that much cash in one place before, I was sure.

"And all those men wanted for it was my mother's bag?"

"That and to change the records so it didn't show that she'd left anything. I'd have to lie and deny it when she came to claim it, I thought, but the thought of all that money...I...I just couldn't resist it! It meant security to me, a safe and secure retirement when I quit the sea, a decent life for a family...there was a girl in Liverpool I was courting..."

His voice trailed off and he recoiled from the intensity of my glare. It sickened me, to hear this man snivel, reciting his pathetic excuses for being part of Mother's death! Rage surged up within me; I wanted to raise my hand and shoot—no, that was too cold and distant, better to step across and hit him, beat him, crash my fists into his skull again and again and again until he was dead for what he'd done. I recoiled from the force of my own hate, caught off-guard.

For just a moment I saw Colonel Warburton's face in my mind, twisted with the force of his passions, and I saw Gregory Dashiell as he'd leered cruelly at the tortured, guilty man.

And then I saw Shizuru, her elegant mask gone as she watched them, sorrow shining in her crimson eyes. It was so strange, somehow, that eyes of such an eerie color could carry such kindness and empathy. And when that image filled my mind, the thought came to me that the Warburton case had been a lesson to me in the price of hatred, of being controlled by passion, almost as if Shizuru had taken me to Warburton Grange for that precise reason.

_This isn't the man I want revenge on_, I told myself. _He's a greedy fool, nothing more._

I shoved the hate back where it belonged and controlled myself.

_Is that better, Shizuru?_

"I didn't know that she was dead!" West screamed. He'd seen it in my face, how close he'd come to death. "I didn't find out until later that Mrs. Kuga had gone overboard an hour before those men approached me. It...it was an accident, everyone said so, but I...I knew it at once. They'd killed her, killed her for whatever she'd had in that bag."

He looked up at me, a desperate appeal in his face.

"I didn't know! If I'd known, I'd have thrown their money back in their face. It...it made me sick when I realized that I'd given them whatever it was they'd committed murder to get."

"Not sick enough to denounce them. You could have proven they were thieves, and the police would have had a chance to open a murder case as well. Without that, the accident story stood."

"What good would it have done?" West protested. "She was already dead! And I'd...I'd have been disgraced, jailed--" He stopped, emptied his glass. His shoulders slumped. "And I'd have lost the money. I couldn't give it up. It was in my hands, a small fortune."

The man who'd bribed him had known their mark. Greed and fear had kept him quiet, and had kept them from having to silence him another way. Not that they'd have cared about West, but another death could have started raising eyebrows.

"But...but I couldn't stop thinking about it. The idea of going back into that office, accepting another passenger's trust...I quit as soon as the _Friesland_ reached port, and I haven't even seen the sea since."

"Tell me about the men," I said flatly. "What did they look like? Did you know their names?"

"One was named John Brown and one Adam Davis." Probably false names. "They were ordinary-looking enough—that's part of what was so awful about it, how _normal_ they seemed! The only thing at all odd about them was that they had the same cuff links."

"Cuff links?"

"Yeah, they were black and gold, a triangle of some black stone and a gold ball just inside one of the points."

"And you say _both_ of the men had these?"

West nodded, head bobbing. It might have meant nothing—something that caught their eyes when they happened to be together. But then again, maybe not. It might be the symbol of some club or group, and that could mean a way to trace them. It might even explain _why._ It was, at least, something to go on.

"What else?" I asked. "Did you notice anything else about them?"

"No, nothing," he murmured, and again I thought of Shizuru, of how much of a person she was able to take in at one glance. How much of those murderers' world would she have been able to learn, had she been there?

But then again, was that even a reasonable wish? She was unique; no one else I knew or knew of could do such things. I couldn't do them myself, not even the adult me I was now. So how could I expect it of West?

That he'd been able to give me anything at all was a blessing.

And now there was nothing left to say.

I put the revolver away. Something flared in his face—relief? hope?--that made my stomach turn. He was a haunted man, he suffered, yes, but he clung to his life now even as he'd clung to it fourteen years ago when he'd come to this cottage.

"Then...then you forgive me?"

"Forgive?"

My gaze seemed to pin him to the chair.

"You told me all this to save your neck, not to put things right. You gave me what I wanted, and now I'm going to leave here and try to forget your sniveling face. That's all that's between us."

I yanked open the door.

"You want forgiveness, West? Go talk to the dead."

I walked out into the twilight, leaving him to his ghosts, and myself to mine.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_A/N: Thank you very much, everyone, for reading, and for making this second story in the series an even bigger success than "Elementary, My Dear Natsuki" (only my third story with 100+ reviews!)! I'm really happy for all your kind words and that you've taken the time to follow my tale of our heroines thus far._

_The story of Colonel Warburton's madness was taken from "The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb," where Watson mentions it as the only other case besides the title story which he brought to Holmes, while the Dartmoor setting of course owes much to _The Hound of the Baskervilles_. Natsuki's subplot, of course, is more firmly rooted in the _HiME_ storyline than in Holmes._

_And, of course, we're by no means done. Please come back for the next story, in which a telegram draws Shizuru and Natsuki to a country estate where murder has marred a house party. But what mystery can there be when the murderer and the motive are already known? And does it have anything to tell Natsuki about her mother's death?_


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